Critical Companion to Dante: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work

C RITICAL C OMPANION TO

Dante A Literary Reference to His Life and Work

JAY RUUD

For Jenny and Chris

Critical Companion to Dante Copyright © 2008 by Jay Ruud All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 ISBN: 978-0-8160-6521-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ruud, Jay. Critical companion to Dante / Jay Ruud. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8160-6521-9 (hc : alk. paper) 1. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title. PQ4335.R88 2008 851'.1—dc22 2007033473 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Text design adapted by James Scotto-Lavino Cover design by Jooyoung An Printed in the United States of America VB Hermitage 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Biography Part II: Works A–Z La commedia (The Divine Comedy) Overview Major Characters in the Commedia Dante the Pilgrim Virgil Beatrice

Inferno Introduction and Upper Hell (Virgil, the Vestibule, the Gate, and Limbo; Cantos 1–4) Sins of Incontinence (the She-Wolf)—(Circles 2–5: Lust, Gluttony, Hoarders and Wasters, Wrathful and Slothful; Cantos 5–7) Walls of Dis and the Heretics (City Walls and Circle 6; Cantos 8–11) Sins of Violence (the Lion)—(Circle 7: Violence against Neighbor, Self, God, Art, and Nature; Cantos 12–17) Simple Fraud (the Leopard)—(Circle 8: Seducers, Panderers, Flatterers, Simoniacs, Diviners, Grafters, Hypocrites, Thieves, Evil Counselors, Sowers of Discord, Falsifiers; Cantos 18–30) Compound Fraud (the Leopard)—(Circle 9: Treachery against Kin, Country, Guests and Hosts, Lords and Benefactors; Cantos 31–34)

Purgatorio Ante-Purgatory (Entrance to Purgatory and the Three Ledges: The Excommunicated, the Late Repentant, and the Negligent Rulers; Cantos 1–9)

v vii 1 19 21 21 23 23 25 26

27 28

35 40 47

58

88

95 97

Lower Purgatory—Love Perverted (The Proud, the Envious, the Wrathful; Cantos 10–17) Middle Purgatory—Love Defective (Terrace 4, the Slothful; Canto 18) Upper Purgatory—Love Misdirected (The Covetous, the Gluttonous, the Lustful; Cantos 19–27) Earthly Paradise and Meeting with Beatrice (Cantos 28–33)

Paradiso Entry to Paradise: Sphere of Fire and Music of the Spheres (Canto 1) Lower Paradise (The Inconstant, the Seekers of Honor, the Amorous; Cantos 2–9) Circles of Souls—the Active and Contemplative Lives (Doctors of the Church, Warriors of God, Just Rulers, the Contemplative; Cantos 10–22) Dante’s Examination: (Spheres of the Fixed Stars and the Primum Mobile; Cantos 23–29) The Empyrean: Mystic Rose and Thrones of the Blessed (Cantos 30–33)

Il convivio (The Banquet) Eclogues Epistles De monarchia (Monarchy) Quaestio de aqua et terra (A Question about Water and Earth) Rime La vita nuova (New Life) De vulgari eloquentia (Eloquence in the Vernacular)

116 132 134 157

172 174 176

191 222 239

249 281 283 297 309 311 349 362

Part III: Related Entries

371

Part IV: Appendices Chronology of Life and Works Internet Sources on Dante Bibliography of Dante’s Works Bibliography of Secondary Sources

533 535 538 540 542

Index

551

Acknowledgments S

pecial thanks should go to Ali Welky, my graduate assistant, whose work (in particular in editing the Divine Comedy section of the book) was absolutely first-rate. I also want to thank my two other graduate assistants, Stephanie Fritts and Joshua Gillespie, who worked with me for shorter periods but whose help was also quite valuable. I should also thank the Graduate School of the University of Central Arkansas for the funding to hire the three aforementioned graduate assistants. I also want to thank Stacey Jones, who has, as always, been a support and inspiration and whose advice on editing matters also proved very beneficial. I should thank, as well, the staff of the Torreyson Library at the University of Central Arkansas,

particularly for their help in obtaining materials. For their contributions to the “Related Entries” section of the book, the students in my graduate class in research methods also deserve my thanks: Paulette Bane, Briana Barentine, Katie Evans, Jessica Felkins, Robert Giles, Anthony Hafner, Jeanette Holland, Whitney Jones, Paul Lewis, Angela Mahan, Joshua Markham, Don Smith, Amy Stahl, and Mandi Tollett. I want to thank Gerardo Bruno for occasional help with Italian. Finally, I want to acknowledge my gratitude to my literary agent, Jodie Rhodes, and to my editor, Jeff Soloway, and the staff at Facts On File.



INTRODUCTION D

ante Alighieri was born nearly 750 years ago. While he achieved some acclaim among his countrymen in his own lifetime, he died under a death sentence, in exile from his home in Florence, and in relative poverty, relying on the goodwill of Guido Novello da Polenta, the lord of Ravenna, for his livelihood. Today a quick Google search brings up more than a million Web sites that mention Dante. Hundreds of books and articles are published annually concerning his works, his life, and his literary influence. In the past dozen years or so, at least 13 new English translations alone of his most popular work, the Inferno, have seen print. Classic translations by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Singleton, John D. Sinclair, Dorothy Sayers, and John Ciardi have been reissued or are still in print. Three different editions of Mark Musa’s translation are available. Allan Mandelbaum, Robert Pinsky, Anthony Esolen, Robin Kirkpatrick, Robert Durling, Ciaran Carson, and Robert Hollander all have recent and attractive paperback translations of the Inferno at affordable prices available to every English-speaking reader in the world. Such availability of his work, in so many forms, would have boggled Dante’s mind, living as he did in a time when each individual text produced had to be painstakingly and expensively copied by hand, so that a book might cost the equivalent of the price of a car in today’s world. Indeed, Dante seems at first a very unlikely candidate for such popularity. Writing in a foreign tongue in what many today consider the ancient past, describing a very sectar-

ian and time-bound medieval Christian (Catholic) afterlife, advocating an outmoded Imperial political stance, employing a pre-Columbian view of geography, a pre-Copernican view of astronomy, a precapitalist view of economics, and a pre-Enlightenment Aristotelian and medieval Scholastic view of philosophy and natural science, Dante seems an archaic curiosity at best. But the afterlife, particularly Hell, has always fascinated people, even those who do not believe in it, and Dante’s vivid, sensuous descriptions of the torments of the damned have engrossed readers for centuries. For those with more spiritual yearnings, his description of Paradise gives the impression of a true mystical experience, an ineffable vision of God. And there is no better literary representation of the moral struggles of everyday life than the Purgatorio. Despite the outmoded politics of his imperial vision, Dante’s insistence on the separation of church and state and his righteous anger over corruption in government (whether secular or ecclesiastical) are as timely now as they were in his day. His inflexible insistence on personal responsibility and his refusal to allow the individuals represented in his text to make excuses or avoid accountability for their actions display foundational values that speak to modern audiences more effectively than any contemporary self-proclaimed moralist. But even if Dante’s subject matter were not engaging in itself, the beauty of his poetry stands out even in translation, particularly when the translation is made by an accomplished Englishlanguage poet. The ambiguity of Francesca’s vii

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reference to Paolo, deeply suggestive but leaving so much unsaid, is brilliantly memorable: “This one, who now will never leave my side, Kissed my mouth, trembling. A Galeotto, that book! And so was he who wrote it; that day we read No further.” (Inferno 5, ll. 121–124, Pinsky translation)

The imagery of daily life for the outcast is captured vividly in lines like these from the Paradiso: . . . You are to know the bitter taste Of others’ bread, how salt it is, and know How hard a path it is for one who goes Descending and ascending others’ stairs. (Paradiso 17, ll. 57–60, Mandelbaum translation)

And the power and finality of the lines inscribed on the gates of Hell give every reader pause: Only those elements time cannot wear Were made before me, and beyond time I stand. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. (Inferno 3, ll. 7–9, Ciardi translation)

Lines like these and countless others inspired Boccaccio and Petrarch. They also spoke to Chaucer and Milton, and, after Henry Cary’s popular 1814 English translation of the Comedy, a long line of 19th- and 20th-century writers in English, including Coleridge, Shelley, Ruskin, Eliot, and Joyce and ultimately Beckett and Seamus Heaney. Even if Dante were not fascinating in himself, he would be of interest to English readers through his influence on these English writers and, indeed, on the entire history of Western literature since the Middle Ages. A recent book edited by Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff, The Poets’ Dante, gathers essays and pieces from 28 modern poets—from Pound, Eliot, and Yeats through Auden, Lowell, and Nemerov to Merrill, Heaney, Merwin, and Pinsky—all appreciations of Dante’s art and genius. John Ruskin called Dante “the central man in the world,” while T. S. Eliot is quoted as saying, “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.” There are those who would propose that Homer, or perhaps Goethe,

might be considered as third or fourth members of this exclusive group, at least in terms of their influence on Western literature. While Dante has never been accused of humility, even he might be surprised to appear on this very short list, which does not include his own beloved Virgil. But certainly ever since Longfellow enraged the trustees of Harvard University by daring to offer a course in Dante—whose poetry was written in a modern European language rather than in Greek or Latin, the only fit languages for serious study—the English-speaking world has been enchanted by Dante. Dante himself saw the future when he insisted on writing the COMMEDIA in Italian, rather than in a classical language no longer spoken by his fellow Italians. He explains his reasons for this (in Latin) in his DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA, and history has proved him right. Dante speaks in a living language, and he speaks eloquently to living readers. Many students are surprised to learn that Dante was the author of several other works in addition to the Divine Comedy. Aside from De vulgari eloquentia he wrote the VITA NUOVA, which introduces readers to his beloved Beatrice and relates her death; the Convivio, a vernacular “banquet” of knowledge gleaned from Latin and Greek philosophers; DE MONARCHIA, a political text advocating the return of imperial power to a single world ruler to counter the secular power of the pope; several Latin epistles (in this book, covered in the entry EPISTLES), two Latin eclogues (covered in the entry ECLOGUES), a scientific treatise on geography (covered in the entry QUAESTIO DE AQUA ET TERRA), and more than 80 lyric poems (most are covered in the entry RIME, the title of the modern collection of Dante’s lyrics, though some are covered in the entries on IL CONVIVIO and the Vita nuova) through which he developed his poetic style and honed his genius before embarking on the great project of his Commedia. All of these works are summarized and analyzed in this volume. This critical companion makes no attempt to be comprehensive. The MLA International Bibliography lists 1,052 items published on Dante since the year 2000—10,831 since the bibliography began in the early 20th century. No single volume could hope to encapsulate the sheer weight of this cumulated

Introduction    ix knowledge. Instead, this book attempts to fill a gap left by the now-outdated Handbook to Dante Studies of Umberto Cosmos (1950). This book is intended to be an introduction to Dante and his works for students and general readers. Reading the summaries and commentaries on the various sections of the Divine Comedy should be a valuable aid for nonexpert readers of that text. The Related Entries section lists and describes most of the important figures Dante meets in the Comedy, as well as many other people, places, and topics important to the understanding of Dante’s life and work. The book may also serve as a reference for more experienced teachers and scholars in providing handy reviews of details from the various texts, discussions of individual characters in the Comedy or in Dante’s life, and an extensive bibliography of works in English, particularly comprehensive with regard to publications since 2000 and generous in its coverage of significant publications prior to that time.

How to Use This Book Part I is a short biography of Dante that describes his life and situates him in his time. Part II consists of entries on all of Dante’s works in alphabetical order, beginning with the Divine Comedy, which, given its prominence, is accorded a far more detailed synopsis and commentary than Dante’s other works. Part III includes entries on Dante’s contemporaries, writers and thinkers who influenced him, characters (both real and mythological) who appear in the Comedy, places, battles, movements, and other significant related items. Part IV contains appendices, including a chronology of Dante’s life and times, an annotated list of valuable Internet sites devoted to Dante, a bibliography of Dante’s works (focusing on English translations), and a bibliography of secondary sources. To indicate a cross-reference, any name or term that appears as a main entry in Part II or Part III is printed on first appearance in an entry in small capital letters.

PART I

Biography

Biography

3

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) DANTE’S WORLD The world into which Dante Alighieri was born was a turbulent hotbed of violent partisan politics that reflected the power struggle between the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor on the international level across Italy and Germany and that spilled over to affect local politics as well. In Italy the major factions were known as the GUELPHs and the GHIBELLINEs, Italianized forms of the names of two rival German factions: the Waiblings, whose name was taken from that of a castle—Waiblingen—the owners of which, the Hohenstaufen family, ultimately produced the Emperors Frederick Barbarossa and FREDERICK II OF SWABIA, and the Welfs, the family that became the greatest political rivals of the Hohenstaufens. Their partisan rivalry, which was essentially the rivalry between pro- and anti-Imperial factions, spread into Italy. In the 16th Canto of his PARADISO, Dante recalls the event that opened FLORENCE to this rivalry: When Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti, heir of an ancient and wealthy Florentine family, forsook the daughter of the Amidei family on their wedding day in order to marry instead the daughter of Gualdrada Donati, the Amidei avenged the dishonor by murdering Buondelmonti at the foot of the statue of Mars at the Ponte Vecchio in 1215. Thus began a bitter feud, and the two families sought support from allies outside Florence: the Amidei from Imperial allies, and the Buondelmonti from allies in allegiance with the papacy. As a result of this feud, between 1215 and 1278, the Guelphs and Ghibellines of Dante’s native TUSCANY were involved in a power struggle that included numerous plots, betrayals, strange alliances, and sometimes open warfare. Authority shifted constantly from one party to the other. Each change in power in the chief Tuscan city of Florence brought with it new orders for the expulsion or exile of prominent members of the losing side, so that it was not at all unusual to be what

The Yale Dante, attributed to the school of Angelo Bronzino ca. 1575 but possibly of earlier date, is the finest Dante portrait in the United States. From Dante and His World, by Thomas Caldecot Chubb, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966.

Dante was to become the last 20 years of his life: a Florentine expatriate. In Florence the Ghibelline party was made up largely of the landed feudal nobility, while the Guelph party comprised the city’s artisan class as well as the lesser aristocracy, the group to which Dante’s family belonged. On the national level the Ghibellines were identified generally by their allegiance to the authority of the emperor in secular matters, while the Guelphs as a group generally supported the power of the pope as the chief political rival of the emperor. As time went on, however, these distinctions became blurred and less important, and local concerns like family feuds and private interests tended to dominate partisan agendas. The issues dividing the Guelphs and Ghibellines of Florence later in the 13th century tended (like the Buondelmonti murder) to be matters of specifically Florentine import.

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Critical Companion to Dante

The Florence of Dante’s youth was one of the richest and largest cities in Europe, and a significant intellectual and artistic, as well as commercial, center. It surpassed PISA in population only in about 1250, but between 1250 and 1300 its population grew to 100,000—larger than Paris and twice as large as London. The growth of the city was chiefly due to its commercial class. The city became a major manufacturer of fur, silk, leather, and most important wool: The wool guild alone controlled 250 shops (called botteghe) and employed some 30,000 people. But the wealthiest groups in Florence were the banking families: There were 80 banks in the city, and the florin, Florence’s currency, was the first gold coin minted in western Europe (in 1252). The florin became a standard currency throughout Europe, cementing the international reputation of the city as a commercial center, and banking families like the Bardi and the Peruzzi became extremely rich. Citizens relying on Florence’s commercial interests, like the bankers and the wool merchants, tended to be Guelphs, while the “old money” aristocracy were generally Ghibellines. Eventually the Guelph party prevailed in Florence, and after the decisive Guelph victory in 1266 at the Battle of Benevento over the Ghibelline forces of MANFRED (son of Frederick II), peace was secured in Florence for nearly 30 years. Dante was a year old when that battle occurred. By the late 1290s, however, the Guelph party itself was splitting into two rival factions, which came to be called the NERI (or Black Guelphs) and the BIANCHI (or White Guelphs). The Whites were led by a wealthy merchant family called the Cerchi (led by the wealthy merchant VIERI DE’ CERCHI) and were generally made up of merchant interests whose chief political goal was peace, since war disrupted trade. The Blacks, on the other hand, fomented Florentine Imperialist interests. They were led by the Donati, a family of old money and with extensive banking interests throughout Europe (Dante’s wife, GEMMA DONATI, was a member of this family). POPE BONIFACE VIII, who received a good deal of financial support from Florentine bankers, openly supported the Black party and through that alliance hoped to gain control over all of Tuscany.

Since their opposition to the Black party ultimately brought the Whites into opposition with the secular interests of the pope, the Whites eventually became allied with the old Ghibelline party. It is within this political context that Dante’s biography must be considered.

FAMILY Perhaps it is best to begin a biography of Dante where he would have preferred: with his greatgreat-grandfather CACCIAGUIDA, to whom Dante looked with pride as the noble founder of his line. Cacciaguida appears among the “warriors of God” in Canto 15 of the Paradiso, because of his role in the Second Crusade: A native Florentine descended from a noble Roman family (the Eliseo), Cacciaguida had accompanied the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad III during that disastrous crusade and was knighted by the emperor before dying in battle in the Holy Land at the age of 42. Cacciaguida had married a woman from Ferrara of the Alighieri family, and, as was customary, the couple named their younger son Alighiero, after the mother’s father. Alighiero I, as he was later called, married the daughter of the respected Florentine Bellincione Berti in about 1170. Alighiero’s own younger son was named Bellincione, as custom dictated. The younger Bellincione was active in the Florentine city government in the 1250s. His own younger son, ALIGHIERO DI BELLINCIONE D’ ALIGHIERO (ALIGHIERO II), was Dante’s father. Alighiero II made his living by renting property in the countryside outside Florence and by lending money. He was married to BELLA (GABRIELLA DEGLI ABATI), who was from a family of very wealthy landowners with strong Ghibelline sympathies. Their eldest son was born near the end of May 1265 and was initially called Durante (enduring) after his mother’s father, Durante degli Abati. By the time the child was baptized in March 1266 in Florence’s 11th-century Baptistry of San Giovanni (named for SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST, patron saint of the commune of Florence), his parents chose to christen him Dante, a shortened form of the name. Our evidence for his birthday is from the poet’s own testimony, in Canto 22 of the Paradiso (ll. 112–123), where he addresses the sign of Gemini as

Biography if it were his muse, suggesting that all of his literary and intellectual attributes have their source in the influence of the constellation of his nativity. That same year, 1266, saw the crushing defeat of the Ghibelline army led by Manfred (the illegitimate son of the Emperor Frederick II) by a Guelph army under Pope Clement IV’s chosen champion, CHARLES OF ANJOU. That defeat essentially quashed Ghibelline influence in Florence for generations. The Guelphs themselves, however, were ultimately to split into two rival factions whose enmity was as bitter as the Guelph-Ghibelline opposition had been. Dante’s own Ghibelline mother, Bella, died in 1272, leaving motherless her seven-year-old son and his younger sister. But Alighiero II was soon remarried, to a woman named Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi, and with her fathered a second son, Francesco, and two more daughters. Dante was to remain close to Francesco throughout his life. The city of Florence was divided into six sections called sestiere (sixths), and the Alighieri family lived in the sestiere called San Piero Maggione, a section that was to become notorious as the sesto degli scandali (the scandalous sixth) because it was in this section that the bitter internecine struggle between Black and White Guelphs was to erupt. But that time had not yet come.

LOVE AND EDUCATION On May Day, 1274, the Alighieris’ neighbor FOLCO PORTINARI hosted a party to celebrate the coming of spring and invited Alighiero II with his young son Dante, not quite nine years old. At the party Dante was to experience one of the transforming moments of his life: It was here that he first laid eyes on Folco’s young daughter Bice. She was the eldest of Folco’s five daughters (he had five sons as well) and for Dante was to become the epitome of charm, grace, and beauty, his “Beatrice” (bringer of blessings). Dante was later to write that after that moment, he sought Beatrice out as often as he could, looking for her in the streets of San Piero Maggione and even following her to church. Beatrice’s mother was Cilia de’ Caponsucchi, whose family owned large estates bordering the Alighieris’ in Pagnolle. With her, Beatrice daily

5

attended church, where Dante often watched her. But Beatrice seems to have been particularly close to her father; Dante speaks of her heartfelt sorrow upon his death. Indeed, Portinari was by all accounts an admirable man, a model citizen who served for two years in the municipal government and who built, on his own family property outside the walls of the city, a hospital for the poor that was named Santa Maria Nuova when it opened in 1288. Unfortunately Portinari did not live long afterward, dying in 1289. Dante’s own father had died in the early 1280s, leaving the teenage Dante to care for his entire family. He seems to have begun by selling off letters of credit that his father held on unpaid loans, thus providing him and his family with ready cash. Nor had Alighiero died without providing for his son’s future in other ways: On February 9, 1277, the 11-year-old Dante was betrothed to 10-year-old Gemma Donati, the daughter of the Alighieri family’s next-door neighbor, Manetto Donati. Manetto was quite wealthy and owned a good deal of land, including an estate that adjoined the Alighieris’ land in Pagnolle. Manetto was rich enough to provide Gemma a dowry twice as large as was conventional for 13th-century Florence, and that clearly was Alighiero’s motive in betrothing his son to Manetto’s daughter. Nor would Dante have expected anything different. There was never any question of his marrying Beatrice, the girl he admired from afar. He would have known that he and Beatrice would marry spouses chosen by their parents, whose concerns were for an alliance that would help ensure economic security for the family. We have no way of knowing what Dante thought about Gemma, or vice versa. Nowhere in any of his extant writings does he ever mention the existence of his wife. Eight years after the betrothal, Dante followed his father’s wishes and went through the religious ceremony that solemnized their marriage, and Dante and Gemma set up housekeeping together. In 1287 their first child, Giovanni, was born. The young Dante did not lack for father figures after Alighiero’s death. In the early 1280s he made his first acquaintance with the popular and influential GUIDO CAVALCANTI, the most important young

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Critical Companion to Dante

poet of Florence. Ten years Dante’s senior, Guido recognized the younger man’s talent and became his mentor and “first friend,” as Dante calls him in the VITA NUOVA. Dante had already begun dabbling in lyric poetry, and he and Cavalcanti belonged to a group called the Fedeli d’Amore (devotees of the god of love), a circle of poets who met periodically in and around Florence to discuss love poetry and to read their poems aloud. The group at various times included LAPO GIANNI and CINO DA PISTOIA. This society, under the leadership of Cavalcanti and eventually of Dante, was beginning to forge a new movement in Italian poetry that was to become known as the DOLCE STIL NOVO (the sweet new style), a faction opposed to the Tuscan love poetry then in vogue, as practiced by GUITTONE D’AREZZO and his followers: Guittone’s poetry was characterized by rhetorical ornamentation and complexity, while the stilnovist ideal, extolling the more direct poetry of GUIDO GUINIZELLI as its model, promoted rhetorical simplicity but employed complex imagery derived from learned sciences like medicine and psychology. It was in this environment that we need to place Dante’s account in his Vita nuova of how Beatrice first spoke with him. Dante claims that, once again on the first day of May, he encountered Beatrice on the street in Florence, flanked by two older ladies. On this occasion Beatrice first spoke with the poet, and Dante goes on to describe a dream he had that night in which the god of love, holding Beatrice in his arms, fed her Dante’s heart. Immediately Dante wrote a SONNET describing the dream and circulated it among the poets of the Fedeli d’Amore, asking for their responses. This initial poem was followed immediately by a number of others expressing his love for Beatrice. If we can believe the details of the Vita nuova, Dante was at the same time engaged in the pretense of addressing love poems to one of Beatrice’s companions as well, disguising his love for Beatrice by pretending to be in love with another woman. In addition to the influence of Cavalcanti, that of his teacher and mentor BRUNETTO LATINI gave Dante another important father figure. Certainly a significant aspect of Dante’s youth would have been his education. Part of this was spent in a

formal school setting, very probably at one of the lower schools operated by the Franciscan order in Florence. Dante may also have attended one of the Franciscans’ more advanced schools of philosophy. At other times the young Dante seems to have had a private tutor. He would have studied the kinds of texts most boys of his time and station read: The basic text would have been a Latin grammar, probably in the standard introduction by the sixthcentury scholar Priscian. This would have been supplemented by the Fables of Aesop and by moral treatises intended to build his character. But later, in the early 1280s, Dante came under the influence of the accomplished scholar Latini. Latini was a writer and scholar who was one of the most significant political figures in Florentine politics from 1266 until he died in 1294 and as such was a role model for the aspiring poet concerned with the political life of his city. Certainly Dante admired Brunetto and held him in high esteem, though in his Comedy he places his old schoolmaster in the seventh circle of Hell, among the sodomites. It has never been completely clear why Dante presents this fate for Brunetto, who is known to have been married and to have fathered several children. In the Comedy his relationship to Dante is clear, however, as Brunetto addresses the pilgrim Dante as “my son.” Brunetto was best known for his allegorical poem Tesoretto, which gives an incomplete account of a narrator’s journey into the next world in search of redemption, an apparent inspiration for Dante’s own great poem. Brunetto had also translated ARISTOTLE’s Ethics and MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO’s De inventione, and it was certainly under Brunetto’s influence that Dante read the authors who were to become most important in his intellectual development: Virgil, BOETHIUS, and Cicero. Brunetto clearly encouraged the young Dante’s zeal for learning, and it is possible that Dante traveled to Bologna around 1287 in order to study rhetoric at the prestigious university in that city. There is no question that, in addition to his infatuation with Beatrice, his poetic apprenticeship under Cavalcanti, and his tutelage under Latini, Dante spent much of the decade of the 1280s learning and exercising the military skills that would

Biography have been expected of him because of his aristocratic ancestry. In that capacity Dante may have been part of a Florentine cavalry troop sent to assist the city’s Sienese allies in putting down a Ghibelline uprising in the city of AREZZO in November 1285. He definitely took part in a later clash with the Aretines, the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO in the Casentino Valley, on June 11, 1289. The hero of that battle was Dante’s wife’s kinsman CORSO DONATI, who led a reserve rear guard of cavalry into battle against orders and routed the attacking Aretines. Ultimately the Florentines killed 1,700 of the enemy and captured an additional 3,000. Later that same month Dante rode again with a smaller contingent of cavalry to lay siege to the castle fortress of Caprona near Pisa. The Guelph nobleman NINO (UGOLINO) VISCONTI had been driven from that fortress earlier in the decade by his uncle, Count UGOLINO DELLA GHERARDESCA and the treacherous Ghibelline Archbishop RUGGIERI DEGLI UBALDINI DELLA PILA, whose grim story of treason and personal betrayal is related in Canto 33 of Dante’s Inferno. Nino, who had sought refuge in Florence after his defeat and become a friend of Dante’s, was restored to his fortress when the castle surrendered after a 10-day siege. In the meantime Dante’s infatuation with Beatrice was consuming his private life in Florence. The 21-year-old Beatrice married SIMONE DE’ BARDI, whose family were wealthy Florentine bankers, some time late in 1287. She was Bardi’s second wife and took with her a substantial dowry of 600 lire in gold florins. She moved in with her husband’s family in Oltrano—that part of Florence on the far side of the ARNO River—and out of Dante’s immediate neighborhood, thus severely curtailing his opportunities to see her. Dante could not have been surprised by the marriage, but in the Vita nuova he describes his devastation when, upon chancing upon Beatrice in the street, she failed to return his greeting. The perceived snub may have been simply due to Beatrice’s acting modestly, as became a newlywed wife. But Dante saw it as punishment for his attentions to another woman (a second “screen” lady to whom he had been paying attention, again, to allay suspicions of his love for Beatrice). Dante

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tells of at least three “confessional” sonnets that he addressed to Beatrice concerning his love for her, but when the lady received them indifferently, he determined to address no more poems directly to her. Instead he would write poems more objectively praising her excellence. With this aim he wrote what is often considered his first real masterpiece in the lyric form, the 70-line CANZONE (or love poem) “Donne, ch’avette intelletto d’amore” (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”), included in Chapter 19 of the Vita nuova. In this lyric addressed to a group of ladies rather than to Beatrice herself, Dante declares that Heaven itself lacks perfection because it lacks Beatrice. In Canto 24 of his Purgatorio Dante was to portray the older poet ORBICCIANI DA LUCCA BONAGIUNTA, recognizing this particular poem as the epitome of the “sweet new style” of the stilnovisti. Clearly Dante saw this poem as a turning point in his poetic development, and just as clearly he saw Guinizelli as his inspiration, as two cantos later in the Purgatorio, he meets the earlier Tuscan poet and addresses him reverentially as “my father.” As the decade of the 1280s drew to a close, Beatrice’s father, Folco Portinari, died on December 31, 1289. Dante composed two sonnets of consolation for the grief-stricken Beatrice and then fell ill himself for some time. He records in the Vita nuova how, during his illness, he dreamed of his own death and of Beatrice’s as well, which in his dream was followed by the end of the world itself. Ultimately, though, he experienced a vision of Beatrice in peace and in glory in Heaven. Dante subsequently described this illness and its accompanying visions in the 84-line “canzone Donna pietosa e di novella etate” (“A Lady of tender years, compassionate”).

NEW LIFE Perhaps that vision prepared Dante somewhat for what happened next. In June 1290, at the tender age of 24, Beatrice herself passed away. This event seems to have been the major turning point in Dante’s personal life. His emotional focal point, and his poetic inspiration, Beatrice had been the center of his life for some 15 years. After some time of despair and mourning, and a brief space wherein

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Critical Companion to Dante

he apparently tried to forget his sorrows with a new object of infatuation (a woman who had looked at the mourning Dante compassionately from her window), Dante began what must have been the formal composition of a book that helped him gain an emotional and intellectual acceptance of Beatrice’s passing. Begun probably in 1293, the small book called Vita nuova (New Life) is a narration of Dante’s relationship with Beatrice, from the time of their first meeting at Portinari’s party on May Day, 1274, through Beatrice’s death and its aftermath in the poet’s life. The narrative is chiefly a context for Dante’s lyric poems: 26 sonnets, four canzone, and a ballad. After the final poem in Chapter 41—a famous sonnet beginning “Oltre la spera che più larga gira” (“Beyond the sphere that makes the widest round”)—in which the poet’s sigh ascends to Heaven and returns to speak the name Beatrice to him, Dante ends the Vita nuova vowing to write no more of Beatrice until he is able to write of her in a “nobler way” and resolves “to write of her that which has never been written of any other woman” (Musa 86). We hear no more of her from Dante until he makes Beatrice the heroine of his great Commedia.

In the aftermath of Beatrice’s death Dante sought to assuage his grief through the reading of philosophy. In particular, he read ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS’s sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy, a short treatise dealing with the problem of innocent suffering in the universe of a benevolent deity. Boethius had written his Consolation in alternating passages of verse and prose—a structure that no doubt influenced Dante’s own Vita nuova, which appeared five years after the death of Beatrice. In addition Dante found particular consolation in Cicero, particularly his advice on dealing with the death of a loved one in De amicitia. He ultimately spent some time investigating contemporary theologians. At the Florentine Dominican center of Santa Maria Novella he studied SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS’s Summa theologica, the masterwork in which Saint Thomas, who had died in 1274, sought to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology. Later with the Franciscans of Santa Croce Dante immersed himself in the visionary texts of SAINT BONAVENTURE. Bonaventure, who had also died in 1274, adhered more closely to SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO than to Aristotle in his theology but also wrote mystical tracts. These two great medieval sages—the rationalist and the mystic—were to provide Dante with the intellectual support and vision behind the grand scheme of his Comedy.

POLITICS AND EXILE

The Naples bust (Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples) is attributed by some to Donatello, but more generally to “an unknown sculptor of the fifteenth century.” From Dante and His World, by Thomas Caldecot Chubb, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966.

Beyond his inner grief over Beatrice and his contemplative pursuits of philosophy, Dante remained an active participant in civic and family life. By the mid-1290s he was head of a Florentine household that included his sister (whose name is unknown); his half brother, Francesco; and his half sister, Gaetana (or Tana), in addition to his wife, Gemma, and their four children: Giovanni, Pietro, Iacopo, and Antonia. The family was supported by income from farmland in Pagnolle and in Camerata, as well as from city property in the parish of San Antonio. It was Francesco who seems to have handled most of the family’s day-to-day business, though occasionally household expenditures exceeded the Alighieris’ income, and Dante was forced to take

Biography out a considerable loan in 1297, followed by two more loans over the next few years. Meanwhile Florentine politics were heating up significantly, spurred on largely by family and class rivalries. In 1293 Florence adopted a body of laws known as the Ordinances of Justice, advocated by GIANO DELLA BELLA. These ordinances were aimed at reducing the power and influence of the nobility and families of traditional ancient wealth. Such persons were barred from holding public office in Florence and were to be prevented from harassing common citizens. Under these laws some 70 magnates were exiled from the city over a two-year period, until as a result of a conspiracy of wealthy Florentines, Giano was charged with treason in 1295 and forced to flee the city. At the heart of the conspiracy were Dante’s wife’s cousin Corso Donati and the newly elected POPE BONIFACE VIII. At the same time the Donati family became embroiled in a violent feud with a neighboring family, the Cerchi. Motivated essentially by class jealousy—the Donati were a family of old money and ancient privilege, while the Cerchi were something of an upstart merchant family of new money—the feud was apparently sparked by the Cerchi’s decision to renovate their Florentine palazzo in a way that would eclipse the Donati’s own nearby estate. The controversy led to street fights and verbal attacks—Corso Donati engaged in public insults of the Cerchi, calling them pigs and asses. Soon the whole of Florence was drawn into the controversy, with Dante’s friend Guido Cavalcanti vocally supporting the Cerchi. The whole situation would seem ludicrous and petty had it not ultimately provoked such violence. The Donati attempted to kill Cavalcanti, and he responded by attacking Corso Donati on the streets of Florence with a group of armed men in an assassination attempt that was equally unsuccessful. By enrolling as a member of the Apothecaries’ Guild sometime in 1295, Dante entered the political life of Florence and plunged into this cauldron of civic turmoil. Certainly Dante was not a pharmacist, but he had studied natural philosophy, and the apothecaries tended to welcome intellectuals among their ranks. In addition apothecaries sold books in their shops, so a man of letters was not

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completely out of place. But although Dante’s friend Cavalcanti and his kinsman Corso Donati were embroiled in the municipal strife of the time, Dante’s motives for entering the fray were idealistic rather than partisan. Certainly he had before him the example of Brunetto Latini, the intellectual statesman, to emulate. But the more immediate impetus for Dante’s plunge into politics was probably the Florentine visit of CHARLES MARTEL d’Anjou, the French prince and titular king of Hungary, in March 1294. Charles arrived in Florence on March 5 along with 200 armed knights, to consult his father, King Charles II of Naples. The young Charles was warmly welcomed in Florence and treated to a cultural festival presented in his honor. He enjoyed a number of musical and poetic performances and apparently was particularly impressed by the performance of Dante’s canzone, “Voi che ‘ntendendo il terzo ciel movete” (“You who through intelligence move the third sphere”). It was a difficult poem with learned allusions in the Dolce stil novo style, and Charles’s sophisticated appreciation of the poem apparently impressed Dante a great deal. In conversations with the young king Dante seems to have become convinced that Charles was the kind of leader who might unite the Holy Roman Empire and pacify the Italian city states. It was a political ideal that Dante was to cling to throughout all his subsequent bitter years of exile, even though Charles himself died in Naples at the age of 24 barely a year later, on August 12, 1295. Much later in his Paradiso (Canto 8) Dante portrays Charles sympathetically in the sphere of Venus (the Heaven of lovers): Here Charles approaches the poet singing the first lines of the canzone, “Voi ch ‘ntendendo,” through which Dante had first become known to him. In 1295 the government of Florence was a middle-class republic administered by three priors who served two-month terms and were representatives of the city’s major guilds. During their brief tenure the priors were housed in the Tower of the Castagna in Dante’s neighborhood. Below the priors were a number of councils (or consigli) made up of anywhere from 36 to 300 members. The councils debated policy, made recommendations, and proposed legislation. The most important of these, the

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Critical Companion to Dante

The Riccardiana Dante (Riccardiana Library, Florence), an illustration of a manuscript collection of Dante’s poems, is clearly modeled after the Naples bust, and has itself been the model for subsequent painters, including Raphael. From Dante and His World, by Thomas Caldecot Chubb, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966.

Common Council, was presided over by a podestà— a foreign administrator who served a limited term as chief magistrate of the city. The large number of participants and the restricted term limits for government officials meant that in any given year in Florence, some 2,000 positions opened up on the various city councils. Dante first appears in the public record addressing a meeting of the Special Council of the Twelve Major Guilds on December 14, 1295. There is evidence that he was a member of the People’s Council of the Commune of Florence and that he also served on the council for the election of priors for the commune, both in 1295. In 1296 he was a member of the Council of the Hundred (the group in charge

of finance and similar important issues for the city). He gained a reputation as a persuasive speaker and ultimately, in June 1300, was elected one of seven priors for June 15–August 15. Florence in the late spring of 1300 was a political powder keg. On May Day a municipal dance had turned into a bloody riot when a group of Donati and a group of Cerchi met on the street, and the 16year-old Ricoberino de’ Cerchi had his nose cut off in the fight. At the Feast of San Giovanni on June 24, a procession of guild leaders was verbally assaulted by the Donati and their allies, demanding the honors due them as magnates of the city. By now the two factions were divided along class lines, with the Cerchi and their allies known as the Bianchi (Whites) and the Donati and their allies known as the Neri (Blacks). As prior, Dante stepped into a situation in which he was forced to make a hard choice. Though personally sympathetic with the White faction, Dante was persuaded, for the good of the city, to punish both sides in order to restore peace to the city. Thus a number of White leaders were exiled, including Guido Cavalcanti, as well as a number of Black leaders, chief among them Dante’s own kinsman Corso Donati. Corso fled to Rome, where he began lining up allies for his return. Cavalcanti accepted the priors’ banishment to Sarzana in western Tuscany but contracted malaria there. He was permitted to return to Florence in his illness but died before the end of the year. Dante’s performance as prior made him a respected and influential leader in Florentine politics, and he continued to speak often at councils. He traveled to Rome on a diplomatic mission for the city during Boniface VIII’s proclaimed jubilee year of 1300. He was also made superintendent of roads and road repairs for the city in April 1301. But his position was soon to change, mainly through the machinations of Pope Boniface himself. There was little question that Boniface favored the Black party of Florence and sympathized with the displaced nobility of the city. He had sent Cardinal Matthew of Acquasparta to Florence, ostensibly to make peace between the feuding factions of Black and White, but the cardinal so clearly favored the Blacks that he lost all credibility with the White faction, who even attempted to assassinate him and

Biography ultimately drove him from the city. Nevertheless, it was Cardinal Matthew who, in June 1301, took to Florence a papal request for military support to help Boniface acquire large tracts of land south of Siena belonging to the Aldobrandeschi family. The sordid background of this request was well known. Boniface had first attempted to obtain these lands by arranging a marriage between his nephew, Goffredo Caetani, and Margherita degli Aldobrandeschi, who had title to the territories. But Margherita, known as the “Red Countess,” was a woman with a past. Having been married twice before, she was engaged in a notorious affair with Nello dei Pannocchieschi. Meanwhile Nello, in order to be with her, had murdered his own wife, PIA DE’ TOLOMEI (a woman Dante later places among the late repentant in his PURGATORIO). In the wake of this scandal Boniface moved to divorce his nephew from the Red Countess but was reluctant to give up his claim to her lands. Therefore he asked Florence to provide him with 200 armed soldiers to secure the area for his own use. When the request was presented before the council of Florence on June 9, Dante spoke up at the meeting and urged the city not to grant the pope’s request. When the question came to a vote 10 days later, the council agreed to provide the support, but Dante’s opposition to the request was well known (his is the only recorded opposition) and was not the sort of thing that Boniface would easily forget. In the meantime the pope seems to have had other plans for Florence. In May 1301 Boniface called CHARLES OF VALOIS into Italy, in part to reestablish the French presence in Sicily (though Charles had renounced his claim to that throne in 1290), but chiefly to persuade Florence, through his military presence, to accept Boniface’s proBlack position. To that end Boniface named him “peacemaker” of Tuscany. In September Charles met in Siena with the exiled Corso Donati, and later that month Dante spoke out in the full city council, urging his fellow citizens to reject any compromise with Charles. When in October Charles entered Castel della Pieve (halfway between Rome and Florence), he joined forces with many of the Donati and other exiled Blacks, and the Florentine

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government decided to send a diplomatic mission to appeal directly to the pope. Chosen for this task were three ambassadors: Corazzo Ubaldini, Maso Minerberti, and Dante. Boniface listened to the Florentine delegation, then sent Corazzo and Maso back to Florence, detaining Dante in Rome. Meanwhile in Dante’s absence Charles of Valois entered Florence in November with 2,000 troops, effectively establishing martial law in the city. The sitting priors were deposed, and a new election on November 8 put all Black priors into power. Further, the exiled Donati supporter Cante de’ Gabrielli di Gubbio was called back to the city to act as podestà, a position he used to take revenge on the Whites as he saw fit. Worst of all, Corso Donati was recalled from exile and immediately led a mob of Black rioters on a looting and burning spree through the San Piero Maggiore section of the city, destroying the Alighieri home, among other buildings. When Cardinal Matthew attempted to curb the violence and pacify the vengeful Black faction, he was chased out of Florence. By April 1302 all the leading Whites had fled the city. By that time Dante and three other prominent Whites had been charged by the new priors with corruption and financial malfeasance in public office. Although there was no real evidence against him, Dante was accused of graft and of taking bribes, both as prior and as commissioner of roads. Finally released from Rome and allowed to return home, Dante heard of these charges while staying in Siena. With prescient caution Dante chose not to return to the city to answer the trumped-up charges, and on March 10 the priors of Florence issued a death sentence on Dante for failing to answer the allegations. If he returned to his native city, Dante was to be burned to death. For Dante it was in effect a sentence of perpetual exile. He never again set foot in the city of his birth.

THE POET IN EXILE Dante’s first years in exile were spent chiefly in and around Tuscany, seeking some means of returning to Florence. In June 1302 he joined 16 other White Guelph exiles in an alliance with the Ghibelline Ulbaldini family of San Godenzo in a plot to invade

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Critical Companion to Dante

Florence. The Blacks of the city, informed of the plot, sent a military force against the exiles but were repulsed. Despite this, nothing ever came of the plan, and Dante lost patience with the alliance and moved to the city of Forlì, northeast of Tuscany, where he procured the services of the city’s ruler, the Ghibelline Scarpetta Ordelaffi. In March 1303 Ordelaffi sent a force that was defeated by Fulcieri da Càlboli, the brutal Florentine podestà. Ordelaffi also employed Dante as a military and political adviser, but the arrangement did not last long, and within six months Dante had left Forlì for VERONA. By this time the political map of Italy had been changed significantly by the death of Boniface VIII in October 1303. After excommunicating the French king, PHILIP IV THE FAIR, over a dispute about taxes, Boniface had been surprised in his palace at Anagni by Philip’s henchmen. They sacked the palace and manhandled Boniface, who never recovered from the shock of the attack, dying a month later in Rome. Setting aside his personal hatred of Boniface, Dante severely condemned the attack on the office of the pope, in Purgatorio 20, calling the act essentially an attack on Christ himself. But the death of Boniface and the ascension of Benedict XI suggested, to the exiled White Guelphs of Florence, an opportunity to change matters in the city. Dante was sent to Verona as an emissary to Bartolomeo della Scala, to request his support for another attempted invasion of Florence. While this request proved unsuccessful, Dante became fast friends with Bartolomeo and stayed in Verona some nine months. In the meantime in June 1304 Pope Benedict had sent to Florence a papal legate, the Dominican Cardinal Niccolo of Prato, to negotiate a peaceful settlement between the Black and White Guelphs. When the Blacks refused to cooperate, Cardinal Niccolo placed the city under interdict. But Pope Benedict died in July, and with the election of POPE CLEMENT V, the papacy was under French domination for most of the 14th century. In the meantime Florentine exiles were amassing an army for a new assault on the city. Having assembled a force of 1,500 cavalry and 9,000 infantry, the exiles launched an attack in the summer but were soundly defeated at Lastra in July 1304.

In Verona Bartolomeo della Scala had also died in March 1304, and Dante’s relationship with Bartolomeo’s brother and heir Alboino was strained. After quarreling, as well, with the White Guelph exiles over his inability to gain support for their invasion plans, Dante cut his ties with them as well, calling them stupid, wicked, impious, and ungrateful. From that moment he washed his hands of conventional Florentine politics. He sojourned briefly in Padua after 1304, and then in Bologna (where he may have spent time as a student in 1287). Here he was able to renew his friendship with the exiled Black Guelph poet Cino da Pistoia. Cino, one of the members of the Florentine Fedeli d’Amore of Dante’s younger days, exchanged a number of personal sonnets with Dante during this period. In 1306 Cino was allowed to return to Pistoia, but by then Dante had also left Bologna for the ancient Tuscan town of Lunigiana, where he was acting as an adviser and negotiator for the marchese MOROELLO MALASPINA in a dispute with the bishop of Luni. Cino sent a sonnet to Dante in Lunigiana in 1305, and Dante’s last sonnet to Cino was sent from the city of Lucca, just west of Florence. In it Dante makes reference to his decision to take a “different course” in his literary career. In all likelihood he was referring to his new project, either the philosophical CONVIVIO or the Latin treatise DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA. This text was unlike anything in European letters up to that time. In it Dante attempted to justify the use of the vernacular language in the composition of serious literary works. Identifying 14 dialects of the Italian language, he focuses on his own Tuscan variety. He extols the lyric CANZONE (a long stanzaic song) as the highest form of poetry, best able to express the sublime themes of war, virtue, and love. He then praises the troubadours BERTRAN DE BORN (as the premier author of war poetry) and ARNAUT DANIEL (ARNAUD) (as the greatest love poet). Cino da Pistoia is commended for his Tuscan poems on love and virtue. De vulgari eloquentia is an ambitious project that Dante never finished. The text, probably written between 1305 and 1306, breaks off abruptly after Chapter 14 of Book 2. It might be assumed that Dante abandoned this text to begin its companion

Biography volume, the Convivio, in which he uses his own canzoni to illustrate the intellectual possibilities of the form (although, since that text is also unfinished, it is also possible that Dante abandoned the Convivio to work on De vulgari eloquentia). The Convivio, or “Banquet,” is structured metaphorically as a “feast of knowledge” in 14 courses. Each “course” is intended to be a separate canzone, followed by a philosophically informed analysis. Begun in Lucca about 1306 and continued as Dante moved about through 1308 (one theory says that Dante was in Paris between 1307 and 1309), the Convivio is unmistakably a book of exile. Aside from his occasional complaints in the text about his life as an expatriate, one has the sense that, after the loss of respect and honor that Dante must have felt during his exile, he intended to gain back his reputation through a treatise on the value and intellectual complexity of his own poetry. Further, reacting to the bitter political squabbles of his own city-state and the ecclesiastical authorities’ interference in secular matters that resulted in Dante’s own banishment, the poet makes a strong case in Book 4 of the Convivio for a universal world emperor. It was an ideal he would cling to for much of his remaining life. As De vulgari eloquentia does, the Convivio breaks off after analysis of only three of the promised 14 canzoni. Again in about 1308 Dante went on to matters that interested him more. It was 1308 or 1309 when Dante began work on his COMEDY. Certainly it was a new direction for him, both in its narrative format and in its Christian emphasis. Whereas in the lyric poetry of the Dolce stil novo virtually all of the dramatic action occurs in the poet’s own psyche, when Dante began work on the INFERNO he began to focus on the sights, sounds, and smells of the physical world and peopled his afterlife with his own acquaintances, with whom his pilgrim character engaged in dramatic verbal exchanges. Perhaps the new direction was inspired by the poet’s close reading of Virgil’s AENEID, another narrative poem of epic scale and scope, filled with dramatic episodes. Dante’s choice of Virgil as his guide into the realms of the afterlife was not made lightly. The Comedy was to demand virtually all of Dante’s literary efforts over the last 13 years of

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his life. Yet it appears that from the moment of its inception, Dante had a clear idea of the overall three-level structure and direction of the poem: There would be three canticles dealing with the three realms of the afterlife (Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven); there would be an even 100 cantos, with 33 cantos in each of the canticles and one additional introductory Canto in the Inferno; and the lines of the poem would be composed in interlocking three-line sets, or TERZA RIMA.

NEW HOPE While Dante was finishing the Inferno, the first canticle of his great epic of the afterlife, he was once again drawn into the politics of his age. This time it was the hope provided by a vigorous new emperor, HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG, that captured Dante’s interest and enthusiastic support. Henry stepped into a political office that had been vacant since the murder of the previous emperor, Albert I of Austria, by his own nephew, John of Swabia, in 1308. But the German electors were unable to choose between Albert’s son, Frederick of Austria, and the French prince Charles of Valois. At that point Henry’s brother, the archbishop of Trier, sponsored Henry’s candidacy among the German princes, and he was elected emperor at Frankfurt am Main in 1308. Henry began to expand his territories immediately by marrying his eldest son to Elizabeth of Bohemia, but his main ambition was to renew the earlier Imperial hegemony over Italy. In this he had the support of the French Pope Clement V, who had moved the seat of the papacy to Avignon in 1305. In about 1308, encouraged by his expectations for the promising new emperor, Dante began working on a prose text on political philosophy, which he was to call DE MONARCHIA. In it he argues that the chief goal of all human society is universal peace, that this peace can only be achieved through a single world government, and that a single world monarch was necessary to achieve this state. Ancillary to this view was Dante’s opinion regarding the papacy: The pope, according to Dante, had authority only in spiritual affairs and should not interfere with secular matters. Although work on De monarchia no doubt impeded his progress on the Inferno, Dante explains

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Critical Companion to Dante

that scholars like him have an obligation to take part in public debates concerning the common good, not simply to debate abstract concepts. Besides, Dante no doubt felt the hardship of trying to write his great work while worrying constantly about his own physical welfare as he bounced from benefactor to benefactor across Italy. A stable political situation in his home country would make the intellectual task of writing his magnum opus far less difficult. Meanwhile Henry readied his army to enter Italy in September 1310. In anticipation of this development, Pope Clement sent a letter addressed to the people of Italy, requesting that they acknowledge Henry as their new emperor, and welcome him as a peacemaker, whose chief role would be to end the civil strife that had torn the country apart and to bring peace. Dante was overjoyed at this new turn of events. In September 1310 from the Casentino Valley of Tuscany, where he was staying in the town of Poppi at the castle of Count Guido da Batifolle, he wrote an open letter to all of the lords of Italy. The letter urged the Italian people to welcome Henry as a peacemaker and to embrace the end of their internecine strife. Henry entered Italy in October 1310. He made his way first to Milan, where he was made king of Lombardy in a ceremony attended by Dante himself. One of Henry’s first acts, however, was to name a Ghibelline as his viceroy, an act that angered Italian Guelphs and, in particular, turned the Black Guelphs of Florence against him. Florence subsequently refused to acknowledge Henry’s imperial claim and would not receive him into the city. Back in the Casentino Valley, now the guest of Count Bandino, a frustrated Dante wrote two more open letters in spring 1311. The first of these, addressed to the “iniquitous” citizens of Florence on March 31, charges the Blacks with breaking the laws of God and man and accuses them of stupidity as well in their refusal to welcome Henry. But he goes on to warn them that if they do not receive him, Henry will invade the city and raze their new walls. Dante’s second letter, dated April 16 and addressed to Henry himself, urges the emperor to invade Florence immediately. It is Florence alone

that stands as the chief barrier to Henry’s unification of all Italy under his power. Whether Henry ever actually saw Dante’s letter is unknown, though Dante is known to have been in correspondence with Henry’s queen, the dynamic Margherita of Brabant. In any case Henry held off on dealing with Florence, choosing instead to besiege the Lombard town of Brescia, east of Milan. But as the year 1312 opened, Henry declared the Florentines to be rebels, yet still postponed dealing with them until he had entered Rome. On June 29, 1312, Henry was, somewhat belatedly, crowned Holy Roman Emperor in the Church of Saint John Lateran in Rome, meaning then to turn his attention to Florence. Now, with the conquest of Tuscany apparently imminent, Dante finally issued his treatise on the monarchy, essentially recognizing Henry as the new world emperor. In fall 1312, however, Henry’s wife, Margherita, died, an event that seems to have affected Henry’s drive and ambition. He entered Tuscany early in 1313 and besieged Florence, but without success. By this time Henry’s Imperial ambitions were beginning to worry Pope Clement, as well as ROBERT OF ANJOU, KING OF NAPLES, who expressed his opposition to Henry’s policies. Having failed to take Florence, and intending to punish Robert, whom he considered his vassal, Henry fell back to Pisa, then Siena, where he contracted malaria. It was there that he died of malarial fever on August 24, 1313.

THE GREAT WORK CONTINUES In 1312, shortly before Henry’s death, Dante returned to Verona. By 1315 he is known to have settled there permanently as the honored guest of CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA, Imperial viceroy of that city. His residence in Verona lasted until 1318—the most extended single sojourn of his long exile. Here Dante enjoyed the kind of respite he needed to be able to make substantial headway on his great work. Can Grande was the younger brother of Dante’s previous patron, Bartolomeo della Scala, and was a young teenager when Dante had seen him last. Now at 23 the capable, generous, and much admired prince Can Grande gave Dante an apartment of his own in his palace, the Scaligeri palazzo, and sometimes invited the poet

Biography to dine at the prince’s own table. Two of Dante’s three sons—Pietro and the youngest, Iacopo— traveled to stay with him at Verona. His eldest son, Giovanni, seems to have been with Dante early in his exile, in Lucca, but there is no record of him after that. Dante’s wife, Gemma, and daughter, Antonia, had remained in Florence, where their gender kept them out of official danger, but where they led an impoverished life. By this time Dante was about 50 years old and, according to GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO (who spoke to citizens who knew Dante at this time), walked with a stoop and had dark, thick hair and a beard (in contrast to the clean-shaven poet who appears in all the usual portraits). While Can Grande’s guest, Dante finished and revised the Inferno, and it is known to have been in circulation by about 1314. He also composed and revised the complete text of the second canticle of the Commedia, the Purgatorio, and by 1318 copies of that text were in circulation. The lighter, more optimistic tone of the Purgatorio as compared with the Inferno is clearly a function of the former canticle’s more hopeful subject matter, but one cannot help suspecting that the tone is influenced, as well, by Dante’s own more pleasant circumstances. Undoubtedly before he left Verona, Dante had also begun and made some progress on the final canticle of the text, his Paradiso. Can Grande himself seems to have taken a sincere interest in Dante’s great project, and Dante wrote a famous “Letter to Can Grande,” probably after he had moved on to RAVENNA, in which he explains to the Veronese prince the allegorical plan of his Commedia. But all was not favorable for Dante during those years in Verona. Aside from the plight of his wife and daughter, he had to endure new difficulties from the Black Guelphs of Florence. A new threat to the city had arisen in the person of the Tuscan warlord UGUCCIONE DELLA FAGGIUOLA. In 1315 he had captured Lucca and threatened to invade Florence itself. In response to this threat, the Florentine government sought to swell its numbers by giving its numerous Ghibelline and White Guelph exiles a chance to return to their native city. Exiles would receive a pardon, the governmental decree said, if they would pay a reduced fine and

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go barefoot to the baptistery of San Giovanni with ropes around their necks. Enraged at the offer, Dante wrote to the Florentine officials, spurning their offer and refusing any act of penitence that would imply he was in any way guilty of the crimes of which he had been accused. The letter from the poet whose Inferno and Purgatorio had by now made him the most famous writer in Italy was taken as a major insult to the Florentine commonwealth, and when Uguccione dealt the Florentine army a devastating defeat at Montecatini in August, the Florentine officials took out much of their mortification and ire on Dante himself, reaffirming his previous death sentence and, for good measure, pronouncing the death sentence on his three sons as well.

RAVENNA Just why Dante decided to leave Verona is not clear. Perhaps he was finding the military atmosphere of Can Grande’s palace less to his liking than he had hoped. In any case, when he received an invitation in spring 1318 from GUIDO NOVELLO DA POLENTA, ruler of Ravenna, he decided to accept the offer. Guido, the nephew of FRANCESCA DA RIMINI (whom Dante had immortalized in Canto 5 of the Inferno), was a great admirer of Dante, who by now was recognized as the great Italian poet by virtue of the Inferno and Purgatorio, by then in circulation. He left Can Grande with profound gratitude for his hospitality and munificence, a gratitude sincerely expressed when Dante dedicated his Paradiso to the Veronese prince. The Adriatic city of Ravenna had the sort of rich history Dante would have enjoyed. In 402 C.E. it had replaced Rome as the imperial capital, and it was filled with beautifully decorated monuments and churches from its days of glory in the fifth and sixth centuries, including Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo with its splendid mosaics (commissioned by Theodoric the Ostrogoth) and the magnificent Basilica of San Vitale, the great church of the emperor JUSTINIAN I—perhaps it was, in part, Justinian’s history in Ravenna that inspired Dante to put into his mouth the history of the Roman Empire in Canto 6 of the Paradiso, the canticle Dante would complete in Ravenna.

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Critical Companion to Dante

It was later in 1318 that Dante moved to Ravenna with his sons Pietro and Iacopo (Dante’s oldest son, Giovanni, may still have been in Lucca). They were joined later by Gemma and Antonia, the reuniting of the family made possible through Guido’s generosity. In Ravenna as well were a number of other prominent Florentine refugees, who formed a kind of intellectual circle around Dante: These included the notary Pietro Giardini, the minor poet Dino Perini, and the physician and philosopher Fiduccio de’ Millotti. In addition Dante’s fame was such that he received communications from admirers throughout Italy. A Bolognese professor of literature, Giovanni del Virgilio (so named because of his admiration for Dante’s own idol, Virgil), sent Dante a Latin lyric eclogue in the Virgilian tradition, praising Dante’s Commedia but asserting that a work of its magnitude should have been composed in Latin. Giovanni also issued an invitation to Dante to visit Bologna, where he promised to crown Dante with the laurel—the symbol of his preeminence as “poet laureate.” With his typical flair and aplomb, Dante responded to Giovanni in kind. Dante’s Latin eclogue is exactly the same length as Giovanni’s but diplomatically declines Bologna’s offer: If he is to be crowned with the laurel, Dante says, he will only have it done in his native Florence. Sometime in 1320 Dante completed his mammoth work with the final editing of the Paradiso, and that third canticle was in circulation by the end of the year, serving only to cement Dante’s reputation as the premier poet of Italy. It is possible that Dante, renowned for his intellect and philosophical knowledge as well as his poetry, spent some of his time in Ravenna teaching or lecturing. In any case it is known that in winter 1320 he traveled back to Verona, where on January 20 he gave an invited lecture on the scientific question of whether anywhere on Earth water in its own sphere could reach a higher elevation than the land that rose out of it. In his lecture Dante contradicted the official position held by the 14th-century church in declaring that it was impossible for water to rise higher than Earth anywhere. One other request was made to Dante from Guido da Polenta himself and therefore could hardly be declined. In spring 1321 a sea battle had broken

out between ships of Ravenna and those of Venice, and as a result the powerful Venetian state was threatening to crush Ravenna. In August a desperate Guido called upon Dante to intervene, sending him along with other envoys to Venice on a mission of peace. By now Dante’s reputation for eloquence and for political argument, bolstered by the three canticles of the Commedia as well as the treatise De monarchia, was such that, according to legend, the Venetians were afraid even to let him speak. Whatever ensued at the conference, Dante and the other envoys secured peace, and a final peace agreement was signed later, in September 1321. It was Dante’s last important act. Returning to Ravenna via a land route from Venice, Dante had to pass through the unhealthy marshlands that lay between. On the journey Dante contracted malaria. The disease progressed quickly, and on the night of September 13–14, 1321, Dante Alighieri died of

Tomb of Dante, Ravenna, Italy (Photo by author)

Biography malarial fever, just as his “first friend,” Guido Cavalcanti, had perished 20 years earlier, and as his great Imperial hope Henry of Luxembourg had died less than a decade before. Dante was 56 years old.

AFTERMATH The great poet’s earthly remains, crowned posthumously with the laurel wreath, were buried at the church of San Francesco in Ravenna, where (despite Florentine efforts to have them removed) they remain to this day. The end of the Polenta family’s dominion in Ravenna postponed the erection of an appropriate tomb to the poet for some 150 years. But a decorous sepulcher, with a relief of Dante reading, was ultimately erected by the Venetian sculptor Pietro Lombardo in 1485, with an epitaph that mentions his poetry as well as his long exile from his “unloving mother,” the city of Florence. He was survived by at least two sons, his daughter, and his wife. Pietro remained close to Can Grande della Scala and with Can Grande’s support studied law at Bologna. He returned to Verona in the late 1320s to become a renowned judge. He also returned briefly to Florence (the death sentence having been lifted after his father’s demise), where he was able to recover his family’s Tuscan property (in Camerata and Pagnille) and divided the income from those estates with his younger brother, Iacopo. His own estate near Verona (acquired in 1353) remained in the Alighieri family for two centuries. But Pietro’s most important contribution to posterity is a Latin commentary on his father’s great poem that has been invaluable to subsequent readers and scholars of the Commedia. Iacopo, the youngest of Dante’s sons, received a generous income from Can Grande but made his home in Ravenna. He, too, spent some time working on a scholarly study of the Commedia, in which he traced the design and structure of the work. As for Dante’s oldest son, Giovanni, his history after accompanying his expatriate father to Lucca early in Dante’s years of exile is a blank slate. Nothing is known of his subsequent life. Nor do we know precisely how long Gemma outlived her husband, although there is documentary evidence that she was still alive as late as June 1333.

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Antonia, Dante’s daughter and apparently his youngest child, born in about 1300, made the decision to enter a nunnery not long after joining her father in Ravenna. She joined the convent of Santo Stefano degli Olivi in Ravenna in 1320 or 1321, taking the name of Sister Beatrice—the name that by that time, through her father’s poetry, was associated with the principal saints of Heaven. She lived a good long life, at least into her 70s, for she is named in a document from the year 1371 as “Sister Beatrice, daughter of Dante Alighieri.” By that time Dante’s reputation had spread throughout Europe, and one of his greatest admirers, the Florentine Giovanni Boccaccio, was about to begin a year-long series of lectures on Dante sponsored by the Commune of Florence. Though Boccaccio was seriously ill in 1372, he agreed to a request by some of the citizens of Florence to honor the poet they now recognized as their greatest citizen with a public reading and commentary on the Commedia. Boccaccio had already written and revised his Trattatello in laude di Dante (In Praise of Dante), a text modeled partly on Virgil’s biographies of Donatus and Servius and partly on medieval saints’ lives, in which Dante is extolled as a poet-hero. Thus Boccaccio was the acknowledged Dante expert in Florence and began his lecture series at the church of Santo Stefano di Badia on October 23, 1373. He gave some 55 public lectures but eventually succumbed to his illness and had to abandon the lecture series after Canto 17 of the Inferno. Boccaccio died late in 1375, but his lecture notes have survived and are known as the Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante. In his lectures Boccaccio interprets each canto of the Commedia first in a literal, then in an allegorical sense. Thus he systematically applies to Dante’s vernacular text the traditional fourfold allegorical interpretation conventionally used for biblical commentary—a method that Dante himself had encouraged in his “Letter to Can Grande” and that other commentators had been applying to the Commedia since its first appearance. Boccaccio’s lectures signal a change in Florence’s opinion of her greatest son—the city’s posthumous forgiveness and acceptance of the exiled poet whom the citizens now wished to claim as their own. As a consequence Florence began a vigorous campaign

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Critical Companion to Dante

to have Dante’s remains transferred to the city of his birth that had rejected him when he was alive. The Commonwealth of Florence petitioned Ravenna in 1396, in 1430, and again in 1476 to have Dante’s remains translated to his native city. Ravenna denied each of these pleas. Under the Florentine Medici pope Leo X these demands became particularly difficult to resist, and in 1519 a papal emissary appeared in Ravenna with a charge from Pope Leo to deliver up Dante’s body, which was to be taken back to Florence and delivered to Michelangelo, who would construct an appropriately glorious tomb for the poet. But when the crypt was opened, Dante’s remains could not be found. They had been stolen by Franciscan monks of Ravenna and hidden away. Again in 1677 Dante’s body was moved, this time into a wooden chest with an inscription in ink on its lid, reading Dantis ossa a me Fre Antonio Santi hic posita Ano 1677 die 18 Octobris (“Dante’s bones placed here by me, Friar Antonio Santi, October 18, 1677”). That box stayed hidden for nearly 200 years, although a small but stately neoclassical temple was built by the Ravenna architect Camillo Morigia in 1780 to house the empty sepulcher. But construction workers repairing the Braccioforte Chapel on the grounds of the Church of San Francesco fortuitously uncovered the body on May 27, 1865. Dante now rests once more in his sepulcher in his adopted city of Ravenna, much to the disappointment of Florence. One cannot help but suspect that Dante would have wanted it that way.

FURTHER READING Anderson, William. Dante the Maker. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. Auerbach, Eric. Dante: Poet of the Secular World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Barbi, Michele. Life of Dante. Translated by Paul Ruggiers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960. Bergin, Thomas G. Dante. New York: Orion Press, 1965.

The Dante death mask (Bargello, Florence) is now thought to be not a death mask but rather an extremely convincing portrait executed at an unknown date, but probably later than the Naples bust. From Dante and His World, by Thomas Caldecot Chubb, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966.

Hollander, Robert. Dante: A Life in Works. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. Lewis, R. W. B. Dante. New York: Penguin, 2001. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. “Life of Dante.” In The Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 1–13. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Quinones, Ricardo J. Dante Alighieri. Boston: Twayne, 1979. Wicksteed, Philip H., trans. The Early Lives of Dante. London: Alexander Moring, 1904.

PART II

Works A to Z

La commedia

La commedia (The Divine Comedy) (ca. 1307–1321) OVERVIEW Dante’s crowning achievement, one of the most important works in Western literature and undisputedly the most important poetic text of the European Middle Ages, is the great poem he calls his Comedy, or Commedia. This seems an odd title for most modern readers, who see little humor in the poem. But there are two reasons Dante calls the poem a comedy. The first, as explained by BENVENUTO DA IMOLA, one of the early Italian commentators on the poem, is that the Comedy (composed in Italian rather than Latin) is written in a vernacular language—an assertion that gains support from Dante’s own comments in Book 2 of DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA, where he defines comedy in terms of style and diction. The other reason for the title has more to do with the poem’s narrative pattern: Since the poem begins in sorrow (the dark wood of sin) and ends in joy (the vision of God), one can easily argue that the poem’s movement parallels the plot of a comedy. Commentators in the 14th century, including Dante’s disciple GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO, began calling the Comedy “Divine” both because of its sacred subject matter and because of its literary significance. Most scholars believe that Dante began composing the Comedy in 1306 or 1307, a few years after his exile from FLORENCE. Since the subject matter of the poem is the journey of a lost pilgrim, who must trek through the three realms of the afterlife on a journey back to his true home, it could be argued that the state of the pilgrim Dante parallels that of the exiled poet. The journey is of course also an ALLEGORY of the soul’s journey to God. Thus the three realms of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven might be interpreted as three steps in the soul’s redemption, Hell demonstrating the recognition of sin, Purgatory the expiation of sin, and Paradise the holy living that follows. This sequence reflects the three-step process of the sacrament of penance, which involves confession, penance, and absolution, portrayed as the pilgrim Dante moves through the INFERNO (which suggests prevenient

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grace, or the conviction of sin), the PURGATORIO (justifying grace, or the assurance of forgiveness), and the PARADISO (sanctifying grace, or the movement toward holy living). This overall three-part organization is one aspect of a remarkably detailed symbolic structure that stands as one of the noteworthy aspects of the Comedy. As a Gothic cathedral does, the Comedy reflects in its structure the perfect harmony of God’s creation and, at the same time, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. The organization of the poem makes extensive use of the numbers 3 (reflecting the Trinity) and 1 (reflecting God’s essential unity). There are the three main sections of the poem (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) called canticles (or cantiche in Italian, singular cantica). Each canticle contains 33 chapters, or cantos, but the Inferno has one additional canto that introduces the entire poem, making the total number of cantos the perfect number 100. The verse form that Dante created specifically for his poem is called TERZA RIMA, rhyming aba bcb cdc and so forth. The tercets (or three-line stanzas) suggest the Trinity and are interlocked, suggesting unity as well. Dante uses the standard Italian hendecasyllabic (or 11-syllable) line, so that each tercet contains 33 syllables—the same as the number of cantos appearing in each canticle and, probably not coincidentally, the age of Christ at the time of his crucifixion. The number 9 (3 times 3) is also significant in the poem’s structure. Dante divides his Inferno into nine circles and follows standard medieval astronomy by including nine spheres in his Heaven. Purgatory contains seven terraces corresponding to the seven deadly sins, plus an Ante-Purgatory (for those who must wait before climbing the peak), and the Earthly Paradise at the top of the mountain. Furthermore, the nine sections of each canticle are arranged into larger three-part structures: In the Inferno, the sins are grouped into three kinds—incontinence, violence, and malicious fraud, represented symbolically by the three beasts (the she-wolf, lion, and leopard) of Canto 1. Purgatory, as Dante’s guide Virgil explains in Canto 17 of that text, is structured according to three kinds of defects in love: Love, which motivates all human actions, even sin, can be misdirected, insufficient,

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La commedia

or perverted, and these defects provide the bases for the organization of Purgatory’s terraces. Even in Paradise the souls of the blessed are arranged according to their own capacities for experiencing God’s grace, and thus their vision might be limited or incomplete, as is the case of the souls in the lower spheres; it might be attained through the cardinal virtues; or it might be the perfect vision of the angels. Although it will be discussed in some detail in the commentary that follows, it seems useful to consider briefly Dante’s use of allegory here at the outset. On one level the events and characters of the Comedy are in a sense literal or historical. Dante is careful to set the events in real time: His journey begins on Good Friday in the year 1300, and he arrives on the shores of Purgatory on the morning of Easter Sunday of that year. He spends three nights on Mount Purgatory and then ascends into Heaven, from which he returns in the end to his life in Florence. Setting his poem in his own recent past means, of course, that Dante can only include in his afterlife the souls of people who had died before April 1300, but it also enables Dante to place prophetic utterances into the mouths of some of the characters the pilgrim meets. Thus he is able to tell the story of his own exile as well as “predict” the coming of the emperor HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG. Hell is conceived as a funnel-shaped cavern descending to the center of the earth, and Purgatory as a mountain emerging from the ocean of the Southern Hemisphere—a mountain formed from the land displaced when Lucifer’s fall from Heaven created the great pit of Hell. Heaven consists of the nine spheres identified by medieval astronomers—the seven planets, the fixed stars, and the Primum Mobile or First Mover. This is conventional medieval geography and cosmography. Further Dante depicts himself as a historical figure, ultimately banned from Florence for political reasons. Beatrice is the beautiful Beatrice Portinari, the unattainable beloved of Dante’s earlier love poetry whose death he describes in the VITA NUOVA. Virgil is the classical Roman poet of the AENEID, the literary genius whose text glorified and idealized the destiny of the Roman Empire

and Dante’s poetic idol. The souls Dante meets in the afterlife—from CIACCO or VANNI FUCCI in the Inferno to FORESE DONATI in Purgatory or his own ancestor CACCIAGUIDA in Heaven—are literal historical persons, often with the same political virtues and vices that they possessed in life. At the same time, however, the poem recounts the journey of the soul of everyman, traveling toward moral perfection and ultimate salvation. Dante the pilgrim, as distinct from the historical Dante the poet, is the personification of the human soul. Beatrice, who sends Virgil to guide Dante on his way, represents divine grace and, in her role as Dante’s guide through Heaven, divine wisdom as well. Virgil represents human reason, the faculty by which human beings may recognize sin and move toward faith—but since salvation can be attained only through grace, it is Beatrice, not Virgil, who must guide Dante into Heaven. Further the individual characters Dante meets on his journey transcend their own historical selves and become representatives of their own sins or virtues. The complexity of Dante’s allegory is discussed in the controversial “Letter to Can Grande” (Epistle 13), a lengthy introduction purported to have been sent by Dante to his patron CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA of VERONA along with a copy of the Paradiso. While some scholars doubt its authenticity, others accept the letter and its assertion that the Comedy should be read in the same way that scholars interpreted the Bible, so that the reader of the Comedy should perceive three different allegorical senses in addition to the historical sense. Thus it is possible to read The Divine Comedy in a number of ways: If one focuses on the literal and historical characters, the Comedy can be read as a political statement reinforcing Dante’s arguments in DE MONARCHIA about the necessity of a single world emperor in Rome to check the secular power of popes like POPE BONIFACE VIII, whose machinations had led to Dante’s exile. On the moral level of the allegory, however, the Comedy demonstrates the development of the pilgrim everyman from a very limited spiritual understanding in the beginning to a true confirmation to the will of God by the end. On a typological level the pilgrim’s moral

La commedia development mirrors the salvation history revealed in the Scriptures. The Comedy made Dante a celebrity in Italy from the time of the first appearance of the Inferno, which was in circulation by 1314. There were 12 early commentaries on the poem that attest to its enormous popularity in the 14th century, and Giovanni Boccaccio enhanced the poem’s reputation through his public lectures on the Comedy presented in Florence in 1373–74. Poets from FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) PETRARCH to Chaucer, to Longfellow and T. S. Eliot, have been inspired by Dante’s text, which has been translated into dozens of languages. More than 400 editions of the poem have appeared in Italy since the 15th century. Several new translations of the poem have appeared in English in the past 20 years (quotations in the following commentary are drawn from Mark Musa’s translation). Clearly the poem has spoken to readers all over the world for hundreds of years, and current readers still find much to admire in the poem through the various contemporary editions.

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diso. That we are dealing with the influential poet Dante is also clear in Purgatorio 24, when the Luccan poet Bonagiunta praises Dante for his “sweet new style” (DOLCE STIL NOVO). His poetic vocation is also foregrounded in Cacciaguida’s charge to him in Paradiso 17 to write all he has seen and hold nothing back. Further, the protagonist is clearly the historical Dante, citizen of Florence, in his political beliefs—his looking forward to a world emperor to curb the secular power of the papacy, his enmity with Ghibellines like Farinata in Inferno 10 or the Black Guelphs whom he condemns in Paradiso 15. Finally the character is also Dante the human lover in what he reveals about his love for Beatrice, the woman he had loved and whose death he writes of in the Vita nuova—a text with which he seems to have expected his readers to have been familiar.

MAJOR CHARACTERS IN THE COMMEDIA Dante the Pilgrim Dante uses a first-person narrator in the poem, much as medieval poets did in what were called “dream-vision poems”—poems that purported to relate an enigmatic dream whose symbols needed interpretation by the reader. Dante’s poem is no dream vision—he presents it as the record of an actual event—but as the dream vision did, the Comedy’s allegory challenged the reader to unlock its various levels of meaning. Thus the first-person narrator is not to be regarded as the historical Dante Alighieri, but a fictionalized version of the poet who also becomes an allegorical figure. To be sure the character of Dante the pilgrim is in many ways identical to Dante the poet. He is the Dante who would in 1302 suffer unjust exile from his home city of Florence, and many of the characters, with the foreknowledge of departed souls, make numerous predictions about his future exile, beginning with Ciacco’s clouded prophecy in Canto 6 of the Inferno and culminating with Cacciaguida’s straightforward warning in Canto 17 of the Para-

The Michelino Dante is a tempera panel painted by Domenico di Michelino in 1465 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Dante’s birth. From Dante and His World, by Thomas Caldecot Chubb, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966.

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La commedia

Thus it is Beatrice who sends Virgil to save the protagonist, and it is the thought of actually seeing Beatrice again that sees Dante through his greatest fear—the ring of fire that bars the entrance into Paradise (Purgatorio 27). It is Beatrice he meets in the Earthly Paradise atop Mount Purgatory, a heavenly Beatrice who calls him by name—“Dante”— when she sees him in Purgatorio 30, l. 55. It is clear, however, that the protagonist of the poem cannot literally be the historical Dante— and not only because the historical Dante never actually visited the three realms of the afterlife. Dante the pilgrim is both the individual fictionalized depiction of the poet, and at the same time the representative of human beings in general. His wandering into the dark wood of sin in the first canto and his desire to overcome his sin and find his way to God are universal human traits, and so the pilgrim Dante becomes, allegorically, an Everyman figure in the poem. As must all human beings, according to Dante’s medieval Christian viewpoint, the pilgrim must first recognize the nature of sin (as he does in the Inferno), make satisfaction for his sin (as he does in the Purgatorio), and increase in wisdom, joy, and love through holy living (as he does in the Paradiso). In this way the pilgrim Dante is a dynamic character, moving from sin to salvation, from ignorance to wisdom, from despair to joy, through his journey toward God. As is true of medieval allegory in general, the character of Dante the pilgrim does not emerge as a fully rounded, multifaceted individual, as might be expected of a more modern protagonist in the realistic tradition. We know that he is 35 years old at the beginning of his journey, but even that is a symbolic age, midway through the journey of life, a turning point for the character to take a new direction and make a new start. As Everyman he displays the kinds of fears that anyone would show in, for example, entering Hell, or riding on the back of the monster Geryon in Inferno 17. He often weeps or shows pity for the sufferings of sinners in Hell (notably Francesca da Rimini in Inferno 5), until his guide, Virgil, convinces him that to do so is to question God’s justice. He also displays a certain vanity when he is welcomed among the great poets of antiquity in Inferno 4,

and righteous anger when he sees Pope Nicholas among the simonists in Inferno 19. As he moves through Purgatory, it is no surprise (having seen these traits in Hell) that the pilgrim expects to spend some time on the terraces of pride, anger, and lust when he returns upon his death to this part of the afterlife. Later he displays a very human eagerness to see again his beloved Beatrice after 10 years, and a very human humiliation when she chides him at their first meeting in Purgatorio 30. In Paradise the pilgrim’s thirst for knowledge and eagerness to learn all he can about the workings of the universe also are no surprise. Finally the pilgrim is not presented with great particularity, but is broadly defined by traits that may seem appropriate for a figure representing Everyman. The pilgrim’s reactions, however, should not generally be taken as reflecting those of Dante the poet, particularly in the Inferno. When the pilgrim swoons at Francesca’s story of her love affair or weeps at the fate of his old mentor BRUNETTO LATINI among the sodomites (Inferno 15), the reader must remember that Dante the poet has placed Francesca and Brunetto in Hell. The pilgrim’s reactions, therefore, are inappropriate, but a part of the process he is going through, learning to recognize sin. On another level these reactions are part of a pattern in which the pilgrim Dante is shown participating in the various sins: Sometimes he participates through sympathy, sometimes through displaying the sin itself, as when he expresses his anger at FILIPPO ARGENTI (Inferno 8), or when he breaks his word to FRIAR (Fra) ALBERIGO (Inferno 33). Even his pride at joining the group of classical poets in Inferno 4 is misguided, since these poets are not in Heaven, and to take pride in his position among them would be to trust in human intellect rather than divine guidance for salvation—and to end in Limbo rather than Paradise. These actions, too, can be read as part of the pilgrim’s education: He is learning to see the potential of all sins within himself, and thus the need for contrition and penance as demonstrated throughout the Purgatorio. Remarkably at the end of the Paradiso Dante the pilgrim and Dante the poet merge again, as Dante presents himself no longer as a character completing his pilgrimage and experiencing a vision

La commedia of God, but as a poet, sitting in his study some time after his return from Paradise, trying with difficulty to remember the experience (Paradiso 33, ll. 60–84), and praying for the ability to put what he could remember into words. This final vision, with Dante’s suggestion that this fiction is indeed no fiction, once more conflates pilgrim and poet and serves the function of conferring on the poet the authority of one who, as the pilgrim, had actually experienced this journey. Virgil For Dante Virgil was the most important poet of antiquity, his poetry the model of classical style and intellectual expression. He thus makes Virgil his guide through both The Inferno and the Purgatorio even though, as a pagan, Virgil cannot enter Paradise and must turn back when the pilgrim Dante reaches the Garden of Eden at the peak of Mount Purgatory. Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 B.C.E.) was author of the greatest Latin epic poem, the Aeneid, the story of the Trojan Aeneas and his escape from burning Troy, chronicling his legendary adventures after the Trojan War and culminating in his settlement in Italy, where his descendants founded the city of Rome. In one sense Virgil is a guide for Dante the poet, who looks at Virgil’s epic style and imitates it at times—particularly in his use of epic similes—throughout his own great poem. There are literally hundreds of allusions to or echoes of Virgilian lines in the lines of the Comedy. Dante calls Virgil’s epic a “tragedy” (Inferno 20, l. 113) shortly before referring to his own poem as a “comedy” (Inferno 21, l. 2), suggesting a parallel but contrasting relationship between the two great poems. It is a short step from Virgil, the author’s poetic guide, to Virgil, the character’s physical guide. Dante saw Virgil as an appropriate guide since, in Book 6 of his Aeneid, Virgil had described Aeneas’s journey into Hades and vision of the afterlife. To this Dante adds a myth of his own making, that Virgil had been summoned by the witch Erichto to fetch a spirit for her from the lowest depths of Hell (Inferno 9, ll. 22–30). Thus Virgil knows his way. Why Dante should choose a pagan Roman poet to guide him through the Christian afterlife is a diffi-

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cult question to answer, but in part it must certainly spring from Virgil’s famous FOURTH ECLOGUE, a poem generally read in the Middle Ages as a prophecy of the birth of Christ. Thus Virgil was often seen as a great prophet ironically unaware of the significance of his own prophesies. Most readers through the years have interpreted Virgil allegorically as human Reason. Thus he is able to guide the pilgrim Everyman through the recognition of sin in the Inferno and even contrition for sin in the Purgatorio but cannot, unaided by revelation, guide the soul of Everyman to salvation. As Reason Virgil is generally shown to be knowledgeable, wise, moderate, and restrained (much like Aeneas, the stoic hero of his own epic). In Hell his knowledge is unfaltering—he knows how to get past the three-headed dog Cerberus in Inferno 6 and the threatening Minotaur in Inferno 12 and knows how to climb down the legs of Satan to move out of Hell in Inferno 34. Never having been in Purgatory, he must work his way through that realm just as his pilgrim ward must, yet his wisdom enables him to discourse on, for example, difficult concepts such as the nature of sin and love in Purgatorio 17. But even here he admits that his definition of love includes only the aspects of love that reason can understand—Dante must wait for Beatrice to explain love as it pertains to faith (Purgatorio 18, ll. 46–48). Since he represents Reason unaided by revelation, Virgil can guide Dante no farther than the peak of Mount Purgatory. Beatrice must take over there to guide the pilgrim the rest of the way. It would be a mistake, though, to see Virgil as nothing more than the empty allegorical figure of Reason. As Dante’s guide and mentor, Virgil displays some very human traits. As a teacher, he constantly reinforces lessons that he expects Dante the pilgrim to learn from his encounters in Hell and Purgatory. He shows impatience with his pupil when the pilgrim continues to express sympathy for the damned, and sometimes even an angry frustration when he sees the pilgrim as easily distracted by the sinful shades, as he is by MASTER ADAM and SINON the Greek in Inferno 30. But he also acts as a father figure for the pilgrim: He is careful to protect his charge from any hostile threats—he tells Dante

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to hide from the devils in the bolgia (or ditch) of the grafters, for instance (Inferno 21), seeing a special danger to the pilgrim there. He rides with the pilgrim on the back of the monster Geryon, placing himself between the pilgrim and the monster’s venomous tail. At one point he even picks up the pilgrim and carries him, when he sees the need to escape quickly from the devils of the grafters’ bolgia in Inferno 23. Virgil is at his most human when he is thwarted or frustrated. Before the gates of Dis in Canto 9, he and the pilgrim are barred from entering the city—for the first time his claim of divine sanction for his journey falls on deaf ears. Virgil is clearly worried and confused, though he tries to reassure the pilgrim, until the heavenly messenger arrives to open the gates. Later he seems quite put out that the devil Malacoda lied to him about the bridge over the sixth bolgia, and angry that he has fallen for the lie. Virgil’s major weakness, of course, is that he is damned. He is an inhabitant of Limbo, the upper circle of Hell reserved for those who, though virtuous, did not believe in Christ. Despite his journey through Purgatory and his witnessing of the workings of contrition and penance leading to salvation, Virgil has not received the divine grace he would need to acquire a saving faith in Jesus Christ. This becomes all too clear when Dante introduces in Purgatorio 22 the character of PUBLIUS PAPINUS STATIUS, the Latin author of the Thebaid and poetic disciple of Virgil. Statius declares that he was saved through reading Virgil’s works, having found faith in Christ through reading the Fourth Eclogue. Thus Virgil is ultimately pictured as a tragic figure, one who (as in the case of Dante the pilgrim himself) is able to lead others to salvation but who remains blind to the truth of revelation himself. Perhaps the most poignant section of the entire Comedy is the point at which Dante the pilgrim, having made his way to the Earthly Paradise and finally gained sight of his beloved Beatrice, turns to speak of her to Virgil and finds his guide has disappeared (Purgatorio 30, ll. 49–54). As Virgil had done so often before, Beatrice must check the pilgrim, this time for mourning the loss of Virgil. It is Dante’s farewell to the secular world of intellect.

Reason without revelation is far too limited and must be transcended in the poem as well as in life. Virgil must return to Limbo. Beatrice The figure of Beatrice is perhaps the most complex image in the Divine Comedy. On the literal level she is, of course, that same Beatrice whom Dante describes as his beloved lady in the VITA NUOVA. According to that text it was May Day, 1274, when the nine-year-old Dante first met Bici Portinari, the daughter of his neighbor Folco, and fell in love with her, calling her Beatrice, or “bringer of blessings.” He began writing poems to her in about 1283 and continued to love her as an ideal even after her marriage to the banker SIMONE DE’ BARDI in 1287. It was to write praises of her as an angelic creature that Dante invented a new style of poetry in the CANZONE Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”). Even after her death on June 8, 1290, Dante seems to have continued to view Beatrice as an ideal, now returned to her native heavenly element. At the end of the Vita nuova Dante vows not to write of Beatrice again until he can write of her what has never been written before about any other woman. This promise is fulfilled in the Comedy. Beatrice’s chief role in the Comedy is to act as Dante’s guide from the Earthly Paradise atop Mount Purgatory into the highest Heaven. Before this, however, she serves as the motive and impetus for the pilgrim Dante’s whole journey, for it is she, at the urging of Dante’s patron saint, SAINT LUCY (inspired by the Virgin Mary), who visits Virgil in Limbo and asks him to go to Dante and be his guide through Hell and Purgatory (Inferno 2, ll. 52–118). It is Virgil’s mention of Beatrice that moves the pilgrim Dante to travel forward on his journey, and his continued references to her inspire the pilgrim to continue when his will seems to be flagging, as in Purgatorio 27, when he must go through the ring of fire. On the literal level, of course, Beatrice is the earthly woman, seeing one who loved her lost and threatened and sending help for pity of him. Allegorically, however, Beatrice here suggests divine grace, without which, according to Scholastic philosophers, one could not begin to seek salvation.

Inferno The love that inspires Beatrice to act can also, allegorically, suggest spiritual love. Thus here and generally throughout the Comedy Beatrice represents God’s grace and love. The fact that the pagan Virgil recognizes her significance implies another meaning for Beatrice. Recalling that she leaves her seat in Heaven beside Rachel (who represents the contemplative life), some scholars have suggested that for Virgil Beatrice represents Lady Philosophy as she appeared to ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS in the Consolation of Philosophy. This last suggestion gathers strength from Beatrice’s role in the Paradiso. Here she is Dante’s guide through the heavenly spheres, and her function is to answer his many questions about the cosmos and about theology. In this role she clearly allegorically represents Divine Wisdom. However, the fact that Beatrice becomes more radiant and beautiful each step they take closer to God and the Empyrean Heaven reinforces her allegorical role as Divine Love, which delights more the nearer one draws to God himself. This role as Divine Wisdom reinforces Beatrice’s most striking appearance in the Comedy, in the Earthly Paradise at the end of the Purgatorio. Here she descends from Heaven in a mystic chariot, clothed in white, green, and red (the colors of the three theological virtues—faith, hope, and love). Her face is veiled, as she withholds from the pilgrim the sight of her eyes and smile, the chief marks of her beauty that he had so praised in his poems to her earthly incarnation. Those beauties allegorically represent God’s love, which here is veiled in part because it will blind the pilgrim when he finally does see it, and in part because this is a scene of judgment. At this point Beatrice allegorically represents Christ himself: As she has appeared to judge the individual soul of the pilgrim, so Christ will judge all humankind on Judgment Day. The role of Beatrice as allegorical Christ figure should be no surprise. If she does indeed represent Divine Wisdom, it should be remembered that in the Jewish “Wisdom” tradition, Wisdom was pictured as female and said to have been with God from the beginning of creation. That figure of Wisdom was conflated with the Greek concept of logos in the first chapter of the Gospel according to John,

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so that logos/Wisdom became the coeternal Second Person of the Trinity. In Dante’s story Beatrice had descended into Limbo in order to save the pilgrim, just as Christ had descended into Limbo to save all the imprisoned faithful from the beginning of time. Her death had led Dante to thoughts of Heaven, just as Christ’s death had all Christians. And here in Canto 30 of the Purgatorio Beatrice has descended again, like the Son of Man appearing in glory to judge the living and the dead on the last day. She forces Dante to account for the sins of his life, which chiefly involved his desertion of her memory to pursue other earthly goods—another woman, in fact, as well as the worldly knowledge that philosophy could give him. While it is certainly true that Beatrice the literal woman seems to be present at this point, chiding her lover for being unfaithful to her memory, she is at the same time Christ himself, calling the sinner to account for his actions before finally taking him into Heaven and ultimate salvation. Finally Beatrice becomes again the literal soul of the earthly Bice Portinari, when she turns her charge over to his final guide, Saint Bernard, in Canto 31 of the Paradiso. Having led the pilgrim this far, she returns finally to her place in the Heavenly Rose, beside Rachel, and after a last look at her former lover, turns her eyes eternally to God, with the implication that he should follow suit.

Inferno (1314) The Inferno has always been the most widely read of the three canticles of the Comedy. Some have suggested that the reason for this is that sin is far more interesting to most people than virtue. In fact the Inferno most likely owes its popularity to the concrete and memorable portraits of some of the individual sinners portrayed in its text: FRANCESCA DA RIMINI, excusing her adultery with Paolo while being blown about by the winds of passion in Canto 2; ULYSSES, describing his mad dash toward Purgatory in Canto 26; BERTRAN DE BORN, holding out his severed head like a lantern in Canto 28; Count UGOLINO DELLA GHERARDESCA’s account of his slow starvation locked in a tower with his children in

28 Inferno Canto 33. These images are depicted permanently on the canvas of Western literature. To understand the Inferno beyond this collection of individual portraits, however, it is important, first, to understand its structure. A reader might first expect that the sinners in Hell will be arranged according to the customary medieval hierarchy of the seven deadly sins. But while that arrangement provides the structure of Dante’s Purgatory, it is absent from the Inferno. In part this is probably because the convention of the seven deadly sins is a Christian construct, and Hell is outside the church entirely. The organization, therefore, is borrowed from ARISTOTLE’s classification of sins in his Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle’s three categories are incontinence (i.e., uncontrolled passion), malice (by which he also implies fraud), and bestiality (probably implying violence). Thus Dante’s Hell punishes first those sinners guilty of lust, gluttony, and such lapses of control as are implied by Aristotle’s incontinence. Next Dante includes those guilty of violent sins like murder or suicide. Finally, and in the most detail, he describes the various sins involving fraud and malice, which he finds worse than sins of violence because they involve the perverted use of the human intellect. These three categories are represented in the first canto of the Inferno by three beasts—a she-wolf (suggesting incontinence), a lion (suggesting violence), and a leopard (suggesting fraud and malice)—who threaten the pilgrim Dante and prevent his ascent toward the light of grace. The pilgrim finds that before he can begin his ascent—before he can begin his journey toward God—he must humble himself by journeying through Hell. For one thing, this enables him to clear his soul of the worldly passions and values that governed his day-to-day life before his turn toward God. The characters he encounters all reveal their own values, whether it is Francesca and her praise of courtly love or FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI with his patriotic values in Canto 10 or BRUNETTO LATINI and his defense of learning in Canto 15. These values, which may have seemed legitimate to the pilgrim Dante or to the reader, are subtly undercut by their proponents’ residence in Hell. But the task of the pilgrim Dante, and of the reader, is to recognize sin in all its forms. Thus Dante is often depicted sympathizing with

the sinners—fainting at Francesca’s story, showing sympathy for Ciacco the hog or for Brunetto. This sympathy is part of a larger pattern that depicts the pilgrim Dante as participating in the various sins, whether by expressing sympathy or by displaying the sin itself (as in his anger at FILIPPO ARGENTI DEGLI ADIMARI in Canto 8), or by symbolically participating (as in his breaking of the baptismal font in the circle punishing simony in Canto 19). As everyman Dante the pilgrim must recognize the existence of these various sins in himself in order to reject them and move on to salvation. The punishments depicted in Dante’s Hell are carefully considered and reflect what Bertran de Born calls in Canto 28 a contrapasso (i.e., a counterpenalty). This system follows the sort of retributive idea of justice recommended in the Old Testament’s call for “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” As the lustful were at the mercy of their uncontrolled passions in life, so in death they are blown about uncontrollably by winds. As the violent shed blood in life, so in death they are boiled in a river of blood. Allegorically the sinners also are personifications of the sin itself, so that their persuasiveness and attractiveness—in the case of the alluring Francesca, for example, or the indomitable Ulysses in Canto 26—suggest the appealing nature of certain kinds of sin. On a moral level, though, it is useful to remember that the contrapasso is simply a repetition of the characters’ sins. The sin itself is its own punishment in Hell—just as, Dante seems to imply, sin is its own punishment on earth. If that is the case, Dante may be suggesting that sin is in fact Hell, and that theologically sin is the moral equivalent of Hell. Ultimately then for the reader as well as for Dante’s pilgrim, the journey through Hell is a learning experience—the kind of learning experience that should change his life.

INTRODUCTION AND UPPER HELL (CANTOS 1–4) Synopsis The first canto opens, we are told, halfway through “our” life—probably, that is, when the narrator is about the age of 35. The speaker of the poem—usually called “Dante the pilgrim” to distinguish the character in the poem from the historical Dante

Inferno    29 the poet—awakens to find himself alone and lost in a dark forest. He has wandered off the true path and now cannot find his way out of a frighteningly dark and dismal valley. Looking up, he sees a lofty hill whose top is bathed in sunshine. Thinking he has found a way out of the darkness, the pilgrim Dante begins to climb the hill toward the light, but his way is blocked by three ferocious beasts: first by a lion, then by a leopard, and finally by a she-wolf, which pursues him most viciously of all. The three beasts force the pilgrim Dante to abandon his climb and retreat back into the dark valley. As he is about to despair, a human figure emerges before him. It turns out to be the shade or soul of the great Latin poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid and Dante’s idol. Dante tells Virgil about the beasts that threatened him and asks for Virgil’s help. Virgil responds that Dante cannot overcome the beasts because the she-wolf alone destroys anyone who approaches her and the beasts will remain where they are until a greyhound chases them all back to Hell, where they live. The only way, then, to reach the light and escape from the dark wood is to follow Virgil along a different path. Virgil tells the pilgrim he will guide him through Hell and through Purgatory, at which point a more worthy guide will appear to lead Dante into Heaven. Uplifted by Virgil’s promises, Dante accepts his guidance, and as Virgil begins the journey, the pilgrim Dante follows. As the second canto opens, Dante says that he began to follow Virgil as night was falling on the first day of the journey (Good Friday, as we learn later), and he says that he will tell of his experience and of the pity involved in his trip through Hell. He then invokes the muses to help him tell his story. First, though, Dante speaks of his doubts. He tells Virgil that he feels unworthy to make this journey, citing Saint Paul and the hero of Virgil’s own great poem, Aeneas, as his predecessors on the trek through the eternal landscapes of Heaven and Hell. Virgil chides Dante for his fear and reassures him by relating the story of how he became Dante’s guide. Dante’s great love Beatrice, he says, had left her place in Heaven to enter Hell itself to ask Virgil to be Dante’s guide. When Virgil asked her how she came to be there, she related how the Virgin

The Forest, from Canto 1 of the Inferno, by Gustave Doré. From Dante’s Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.

Mary took pity on Dante’s plight and approached Saint Lucy, to whom Dante seems to have been especially devoted. Saint Lucy in turn turned to Beatrice, who was sitting in contemplation with the Old Testament figure Rachel. Upon Lucy’s urging Beatrice left her honored place in Heaven to go to the aid of the one who in life had loved her so dearly, and as she recounted her story to Virgil in Limbo, she wept. How then, Virgil asks Dante, can the pilgrim hesitate, when three such blessed ladies have done so much to help him, and when Virgil himself has offered to be his escort? Upon hearing how his beloved Beatrice cares for him even in Heaven and taking heart at Virgil’s account, Dante rallies his spirits and sets his face toward Hell. The third Canto opens with the inscription carved over the gate into Hell itself: This gate, leading into what it calls a “city” of woe, was designed,

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the inscription says, by divine power, wisdom, and love, moved by justice. The inscription ends with the ominous charge to anyone entering the gate to “abandon all hope.” Dante momentarily balks at these words, but, reassured by Virgil, he moves through the gate and stands in the vestibule of Hell—a kind of entry hall into the main realm of the Inferno. Here the poets encounter their first group of souls: Dante sees innumerable shades, all chasing a banner that eternally runs before them as they themselves are chased and tormented by swarms of flies and hornets. The blood that flows down from their wounded bodies feeds a blanket of maggots and worms over which they run. These shades are the opportunists, those who in times of decision failed to take a stand for good or evil but followed only the path that might benefit them-

The inscription over Hell-gate, from Canto 3 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

selves. Among these are also the angels who refused to take a side during the rebellion of Lucifer. Dante recognizes several shades among these but names none of them. He does, however, identify one of these souls as he who made the “great denial”: This almost certainly refers to POPE CELESTINE V, who resigned the office of the papacy in order to enter a life of contemplation at the urging of the man who later succeeded him, POPE BONIFACE VIII. Without stopping to talk to any of these souls, Dante and Virgil advance to the river Acheron. The poets must cross this first of the rivers of the underworld to enter into Hell proper, so they join the crowd of newly dead souls waiting on the shore to be ferried across into the Inferno. The monstrous old boatman, Charon, arrives but notices Dante among the throng of souls and recognizes that he is a living man. Charon orders Dante to get away from the boat, but Virgil immediately demonstrates his authority and his value as guide by subduing Charon and convincing him that the will of God is behind Dante’s journey through the realms of the afterlife. Charon says no more and begins to ferry the poets across the river. But as they begin to cross, the earth shakes and a strong wind begins to howl. Dante swoons in fear and does not wake again until the poets have arrived on the far shore. When a thunderclap rouses Dante from his swoon, he realizes he has reached the far side of Acheron. Virgil now leads Dante into the first circle of the deep, funnel-shaped pit of Hell, a circle called Limbo. Here the shades suffer none of the physical torment Dante will witness in deeper circles, for they are not in fact sinners. These are the virtuous pagans and unchristened children, prevented from entering Heaven, according to orthodox medieval Christianity, solely by their lack of baptism. Their suffering is mental and spiritual: The souls live with the desire for Heaven but without hope. This is Virgil’s home. Dante asks whether anyone from this circle has ever been allowed to leave (aside from Virgil himself, now guiding the pilgrim), and Virgil relates how Jesus Christ, after his crucifixion, descended into Limbo and rescued the souls of Old Testament figures such as ADAM, Noah, Moses, and KING DAVID, whose salvation was based on an implicit faith in a Christ to come—an event known as the “Harrowing of Hell.”

Inferno As the poets walk toward a light shining in the darkness, they are met by a group of four figures— HOMER, HORACE (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCIUS), OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO), and LUCAN (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS)—who join Virgil to form a group of the five greatest poets of classical antiquity. After a few steps they beckon to Dante to join them, and he becomes the sixth member of this exalted group. They continue to walk toward the source of the light: a magnificent castle with a moat and seven walls. This impressive structure represents the highest achievement possible for human reason unaided by divine revelation. It is a beautiful place, but it is still in Hell. Here Dante sees other great figures of antiquity: political figures such as Aeneas and GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR; philosophers such as PLATO, Socrates, and Aristotle; thinkers such as Euclid and Ptolemy. He also sees important figures of medieval Islam, such as Saladin, AVERRÖES, and Avicenna. In all Dante names 38 important historical or legendary figures but finally is led out of the castle and back into the darkness by Virgil. The poets must make haste to move through the remaining circles of Hell. Commentary The opening stanza or tercet of Canto 1 places the action of the entire Comedy in context. Alluding to the “threescore years and ten” (i.e., 70 years) allotted for the human life span according to the Psalms (90.10), Dante is saying that the events of the poem occurred when he was 35 years old—that is, in the year 1300. Placing the poem in the recent past allows Dante to put prophetic speeches into the mouths of his characters, whose position in the afterlife allows them to predict future events, since Dante is writing these verses after 1307. Significant, as well, is the poet’s use of the phrase “our life,” rather than “my life.” He thus includes the reader in his narration, implying that he is one of “us.” It seems that from the very beginning of the text, the narrator is not only a fictional representation of the poet Dante in the year 1300 but also a representative example of all of us—an Everyman figure with whom the reader is invited to identify as he makes his journey. Traditional Christian allegory of the European Middle Ages commonly used the Everyman figure

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as its central character. While the Comedy may be read on a literal level—the 35-year-old poet Dante finds himself lost in a dark wood one day in the year 1300—we are also invited to read it on an allegorical level, in which each character, object, or event in the poem has another level of meaning. The poem makes abstract spiritual concepts concrete. Thus when the narrator finds himself in the “dark wood” after straying off the “right path,” we are also to understand that Everyman—that is, any human being—finds himself in the dark state of sin and error after having wandered from the true moral course established by God. The sunlight at the top of the hill suggests the love and grace of God and foreshadows the Paradise Dante will enter in the last section of the poem. To describe the manner in which the narrator begins to climb the hill, Dante uses the first of what will amount to hundreds of epic similes (extended similes in which the figurative term is so elaborate as to eclipse the literal term) in the Comedy. In using these similes, Dante imitates the style of Virgil’s great epic, the Aeneid. In fact this first simile (ll. 22–27)—in which he compares himself climbing the hill and looking back to the dark valley to an exhausted swimmer who, having reached shore, looks back at the waves that nearly drowned him—may allude to Book 1 of the Aeneid, wherein Aeneas, saved from a storm at sea and standing on shore, climbs a rocky hill to look back at the water for a sight of any other Trojan ship. The significance of the three beasts that threaten the pilgrim on the hill has been much debated. It is clear that they are taken from the book of Jeremiah (5.6): “Therefore a lion from the forest shall kill them, a wolf from the desert shall destroy them. A leopard is watching against their cities; everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces—because their transgressions are many, their apostasies are great” (New Revised Standard Version [NRSV]). Thus the beasts most clearly represent the forces of sin that prevent Everyman from reaching grace. It is more difficult, however, to assign more specific allegorical meaning to each beast. Early commentators saw them as representing lust (the she-wolf), pride (the lion), and avarice (the leopard), though it is difficult to see why

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Dante running from the three beasts is rescued by Virgil, from Canto 1 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

Dante would have chosen merely these three sins to highlight at this point. It seems more likely that the beasts prefigure the three major divisions of Hell that Virgil discusses in Canto 11 (ll. 16–111): Thus the she-wolf suggests the sins of incontinence and concupiscence that are punished in circles two through five of the Inferno; the lion symbolizes all types of violence, punished in circle seven; and the leopard symbolizes the sins of fraud, represented in its various forms, seen in circles eight and nine of Hell. These three categories of sin, and hence divisions of Hell, roughly correspond to Aristotle’s classification of sins in the Nicomachean Ethics, in which he distinguishes incontinence, malice, and bestiality (the last two suggesting “fraud” and “violence”). Why Dante should choose a classical organization for Hell rather than the conventional medieval Christian scheme of the seven deadly sins

is a puzzle. Perhaps because the sinners in Hell are outside the possibility of redemption, the categories of their sins are those recognized in the pagan classical world, rather than in the world of the saved. Dante’s Purgatory, where all of the souls are saved, is structured according to the Christian design of the seven deadly sins. The significance of Virgil himself is complex as well. He is, for Dante, the greatest of all classical authors, and his Aeneid the pinnacle of epic poetry. He refers to Virgil’s poem later as a “tragedy,” and his choice to call his own poem a “comedy” reflects his desire to create a work that rivaled Virgil’s in its epic scope but differed from it in its emphasis on the salvation of the individual soul rather than upon the destiny of the Roman nation. Besides, Book 6 of Virgil’s poem describes the visit of Aeneas to the underworld, so Virgil knows the way from earth

Inferno to Hell. In addition Virgil’s FOURTH ECLOGUE was interpreted by medieval Christians as containing a prophecy of the birth of Christ, so that Virgil could be seen by a medieval audience as a link between the ancient classical world and the medieval Christian one. Thus the shade of Virgil leads the pilgrim Dante through Hell and Purgatory, as the poet Virgil in a sense leads the poet Dante through the first two canticles of his poem. Allegorically as the composer of what Dante considered the greatest work of Western literary art, Virgil is usually seen as representing human Reason. But as a classical pagan Virgil is beyond Christian redemption—thus he mentions the “false gods” who were worshipped when he lived. As such he symbolizes the highest achievement a human being can reach without the aid of divine grace. Reason can lead the individual to recognize the nature of sin and to repudiate it, and this is essentially what Virgil will do for the Everyman Dante as he leads him through Hell and Purgatory. But he will be unable to take him into Paradise, since only through divine love and grace can one enter. Thus Beatrice will become Dante’s guide through the heavenly spheres. In addition to its Christian allegory, the Comedy contains a good deal of political commentary concerning the current situation in Italy, particularly in Dante’s home city of Florence, and the struggle between papal and Imperial claims to secular authority. The most obscure reference in the first Canto is Virgil’s prophecy of the greyhound (l. 95) that will destroy the she-wolf and, according to Virgil, restore broken Italy. Essentially this encapsulates Dante’s dream of a single world emperor, which he elaborates in DE MONARCHIA, a dream that he thought would lead to peace (as it did in Virgil’s own time under Augustus). Some have suggested that the greyhound represents the Holy Roman Emperor, HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG, who had become emperor in 1308, about the same time Dante was beginning work on De monarchia and was working on the early cantos of the Inferno. Another candidate has been the French prince CHARLES MARTEL d’Anjou. But Charles had died in 1295, so the prophecy would be senseless in 1300. The most likely historical figure corre-

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sponding to the greyhound is Dante’s friend and patron in his exile, CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA, the emperor’s viceroy in Verona from 1308 to 1329. Virgil’s obscure description of the greyhound as being born “between Feltro and Feltro” seems to fit Can Grande, who was born in Verona, which lies between the cities of Feltro and Montefeltro. How Can Grande would rid the world of the sins of incontinence is obscure, unless Dante saw those sins—lust, gluttony, and greed—as particularly attached to the secular ambitions of the papacy. Dante’s hesitancy before following Vigil into Hell itself serves a structural function in this canticle and for the Comedy as a whole: It allows for a second beginning. Notice that the invocation to the Muses takes place here in Canto 2, not in Canto 1. There will be a parallel invocation in the first Canto of both the PURGATORIO and the PARADISO. Consider that the Purgatorio and the Paradiso have 33 cantos each, while the Inferno has 34 (for a total of 100 cantos altogether). Dante clearly considered Canto 2 the first canto of the Inferno proper, with Canto 1 serving as an introductory canto to the entire Comedy, rather than simply to the Inferno itself. Dante’s hesitancy serves a thematic function as well. Dante compares himself first to Aeneas and then to Saint Paul. The descent of Aeneas into Hades was, Dante says in line 27, a victory for Aeneas, for the Roman Empire, and for the papacy. This is a peculiarly medieval way of looking at the event: The Roman Empire made possible the spread of Christianity and the Roman Church. This sometimes strained coexistence of empire and papacy is, as mentioned earlier, the chief political theme of the Comedy. Further, as Aeneas in Hades received a prophecy of the political future from his father, Anchises, so Dante might expect to hear political prophecies in his visit to the afterlife. As for Saint Paul, he was caught up into Heaven in order to strengthen his faith (2 Corinthians 12.3) in order to help him convey God’s message to the world. Dante thus calls Paul the “chosen vessel.” The implication may be that Dante himself, a new “chosen vessel,” is destined through his Comedy to spread his faith through the world. The three women who play such a substantial role in Canto 2 are, first, the counterparts of the

34 Inferno three beasts of Canto 1, balancing those symbols of human sin with symbols of God’s grace. The Virgin Mary, traditional symbol of Divine Mercy, first takes pity on Dante and sends Saint Lucy (or Lucia), whose name means “light” and who is generally seen as the figure of “illuminating grace” in the poem—the grace that, in traditional medieval theology first directs the intellect toward salvation. To achieve this in Dante, Lucy sends Beatrice. Beatrice, whose name means “bringer of blessings,” suggests in this particular canto Divine Wisdom (especially in her reclining position beside the contemplative Rachel), but in general and most often through the Comedy, as Dante’s beloved, seems to symbolize perfect divine love. Since Dante’s Beatrice lived 1300 years after the Roman poet, it is somewhat surprising that Virgil actually recognizes her when she visits him in Limbo. But the manner in which he addresses Beatrice (in lines 75ff.) suggests that he recognizes not her historical identity but her allegorical significance. She is, he says, the being through whom mankind is able to rise above the limits of mortality. These limits are imposed on us by the goddess Fortuna, who governs all the changeable world beneath the moon. It has been suggested that Beatrice therefore represents Lady Philosophy as pictured in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. But that seems inconsistent: If Virgil, as Human Reason, cannot conduct Dante beyond Purgatory, how can Philosophy do so? It could be that Virgil understands Beatrice according to the limits of his own classical paganism, wherein through meditation one could transcend the world of change and enter the realm of permanence. Beatrice, after all, descended to him from the side of Rachel, who commentators agree is a symbol of the contemplative life. But surely Dante’s readers are not meant to be limited by Virgil’s vision and should rather see Beatrice as the Christian symbol of Divine Love that Dante makes her throughout the Comedy. Canto 3 introduces the pilgrim to the first group of sinners in Hell—men and women who lived their lives without honor or without reproach, because they never took a stand. Thus they are denied a place in Heaven, but even Hell will not receive them, so they will spend eternity in Hell’s vestibule.

Appropriately neither Dante nor Virgil speaks the name of any of the souls in the vestibule: They did nothing in their lives, good or bad, that would cause their names to be remembered. This canto also introduces the principle of punishment in Dante’s Hell. In what he later refers to as contrapasso (Canto 27, l. 142), Dante imagines for every sin a punishment appropriate to the crime. Retribution in Dante’s Hell requires either that the sinners eternally repeat their sin in some symbolic form, or, in some cases, that they be eternally reminded of the sin by engaging in behavior that directly contrasts with their sin. In this case the sinners who never followed any real goal or leader in their lives must eternally chase a meaningless and constantly shifting banner. The sinners who felt no goad to action in their lives are continually stung by pursuing wasps and hornets. This idea of contrapasso goes further, however. Dante intended his allegory to be interpreted on four levels, one of which is the personal moral level. What the system of contrapasso suggests on a moral level is that sin and Hell are identical. Dante implies that insofar as sin separates us from the love of God, sin itself is the moral equivalent of being in Hell. It also suggests that since sin is a choice willed by an individual, Hell itself is simply the eternal confirmation and fulfillment of that same choice. Canto 4 completes Dante’s preparation for his plunge into the true torments of Hell by giving him a slight respite among the great figures (historical and legendary) of antiquity. Christian tradition held that Limbo—a place without torment but eternally separated from God—had been prepared for the spirits of virtuous Old Testament figures born before the advent of Christ, and for the souls of unbaptized infants born after Christ’s resurrection. Since in the church’s view, Christ’s Harrowing of Hell had set free the Old Testament patriarchs and matriarchs, there should be only unbaptized children in Limbo when the pilgrim arrives. Dante has altered tradition by peopling Limbo with virtuous pagans of classical Greece and Rome (and even a few contemporary Muslims), seeing no reason to consign them to the anguish of Hell. The orthodox Christian view, of course, held that “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” (outside the

Inferno church, there is no salvation), so Dante could not place the Homers and Aristotles in Paradise. And although a few later 14th-century writers (Julian of Norwich and William Langland, for example) suggested that God might ultimately save even pagans, Dante was somewhat radical even in consigning them to Limbo. While Limbo is not a happy place, because it lacks the hope of ultimate salvation, its inhabitants live in a sedate environment where they can converse about ideas with the other virtuous souls. Limbo is pictured very like the classical Elysian fields in which Aeneas conversed with the shade of his father, Anchises, in Virgil’s epic. The scene in which the five great poets of antiquity accept Dante as the sixth among their number seems by most measures to be pure egotistical selfaggrandizing. Modern readers generally feel that even if Dante’s self-praise is accurate, he ought to be more modest about it (as, for example, is Chaucer at the end of Troilus and Criseyde when he kisses the footsteps of the great poets, such as Virgil and Homer, who preceded him). In fact before the circulation of the Inferno itself (that is, at the time this journey is said to be taking place), few would have considered Dante worthy of such high praise. But part of the purpose of Dante’s gesture here is to indicate his conception of the role of poet that he was trying to fill, and the significance of the Comedy itself as Dante was conceiving it. In another sense Dante’s identification of himself with the great classical poets may not be complimentary at all. They are in Hell, remember. It is a very nice corner of Hell, but it is Hell nonetheless. Dante consistently sympathizes with, admires, or identifies with some of the figures he meets in the Inferno. This is a way of recognizing the sin in himself. On the moral level the journey through Hell is like the first step of Christian penance: In order to expiate the sin (which will occur in Purgatory), one must first recognize it. Dante, as the Everyman figure of the Comedy, ultimately recognizes it. One final aspect of the fourth canto that has caused some scholarly debate is the allegory of the castle itself. The most likely interpretation is that it represents philosophy, the learned pursuit of wisdom without the aid of revelation. The seven walls may suggest the four moral virtues (prudence,

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justice, fortitude, and temperance) and three speculative virtues (wisdom, science, and understanding)—that is, virtues not necessarily connected with the Christian faith. The seven portals into the castle most likely denote the seven liberal arts studied in medieval universities (the trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the quadrivium—geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music). The castle’s light of human philosophy is bright and impressive indeed, but without faith or revelation it shines only in an eternity of darkness.

SINS OF INCONTINENCE (THE SHE-WOLF) (CANTOS 5–7) Synopsis Virgil leads Dante from Limbo down toward the second circle of Hell, where the true punishments begin. In their way sits Minos, the mythological figure who was so just in life that the gods made him judge of the dead. He has that role in Book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid, but Dante depicts Minos as half-human, half-beast. As sinners approach him, Minos assigns them to the circle where they are to spend eternity, according to the number of times he wraps his tail around himself. When Dante approaches, Minos accosts him, warning him to be careful about whom he trusts. Virgil steps in once more, admonishing Minos not to hinder what has been willed on high. The poets pass into the second circle, the first of a series of rounds dealing with sins of appetite and lack of control—the kinds of sins represented by the she-wolf in Canto 1. As the poets stand on a ledge looking into circle two, they see thousands of shades being blown about wildly by a raging whirlwind. These are the souls of the lustful, who in life were driven by their own passions. From their vantage point Virgil points out to Dante the souls of Aeneas’s lover DIDO, Helen of Troy and her lover Paris, ACHILLES and Semiramis, and the great lover of medieval courtly romance, Tristan. When they see a pair of lovers clinging together, Dante desires to speak with them. At Virgil’s suggestion Dante calls to them in the name of their love, and they approach to hover close by the poet. They are FRANCESCA DA RIMINI of RAVENNA and her lover, her brother-in-law Paolo da Rimini.

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Inferno

While Paolo weeps upon her shoulder, Francesca tells Dante their story: Their desire for one another was whetted by their reading a romance of Lancelot and Guinevere aloud. When they reached the point where Lancelot kisses Guinevere, they were overcome by their passion and, as Francesca says, “that day we read no more.” The two lovers died together, murdered by Francesca’s husband, who, she tells the poet, is damned to Caina, the ninth circle of the Inferno, which houses the murderers of kinsmen. At this point overcome by pity for Francesca, Dante swoons again. Dante awakens from his swoon to find himself in the third circle. Here a putrid freezing rain and filthy snow fall incessantly, covering the ground with a fetid slush, while a horrible stench fills the air. The poets’ way is blocked by the guardian of this circle, the three-headed dog Cerberus, who

in classical mythology was warden of the entire underworld. The ravenous dog threatens them, but Virgil distracts him by throwing handfuls of the disgusting slush at him. The poets slip past the beast and find themselves moving among the souls of the gluttons: Those who wasted their lives on food and drink now wallow eternally in the foul slime of this circle, pelted by the stinking rain and torn randomly by the rapacious Cerberus. As the poets pass by, one of the shades rises from the slush and addresses Dante. Though Dante does not recognize him because his features are so changed by his sin and its punishment, he identifies himself as the Florentine CIACCO—a name that means “the hog.” Ciacco is eager to hear news of Florence. As the writer Dante imagines it, the damned all have knowledge of the past and foreknowledge of the future but have no knowledge of

Cerebus, from Canto 6 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

Inferno present events in the living world. At the pilgrim’s urging Ciacco pronounces the first of what will be several political prophecies in the Inferno. He tells Dante that the White party will soon drive the Blacks from Florence, but that within three years the Blacks will return, with the aid of one who currently has not chosen sides. The Blacks will hold sway for a long time, Ciacco says, and although there are two just men in the city, no one listens to them. Dante asks Ciacco about five other prominent Florentines of the past whom he considered worthy but is told that they are all deeper down in Hell. As Dante parts from him, Ciacco requests that Dante remember his name when he returns to the world of the living. As the poets move on, Dante asks Virgil about the Last Judgment. Will the punishments of the damned be worsened or lessened when they are reunited with their bodies? Virgil refers Dante to Aristotle, suggesting that when creation is perfected after the Last Judgment, then the punishment of the damned will be perfected as well—thus the suffering will intensify for the souls in Hell, while heavenly bliss will intensify for those in Paradise. While they speak, the poets approach the edge of the next circle. As the poets approach to the fourth circle, they are accosted by Plutus, the pagan god of wealth, who is guardian of this round. Plutus, imagined by Dante as a bestial demon, menaces the pilgrims in a bizarre, inarticulate gibberish. But as he had with Charon and Minos, Virgil quiets Plutus by declaring that this journey was willed on high, and the demon collapses. As they enter the circle, Virgil and Dante witness what seems to be a raging battle, as two mobs of shouting sinners push great boulder-sized weights against one another, clashing together again and again. These opposing groups, Virgil explains, are made up of the misers on one side and the wasters on the other. Both groups in their own way valued money inordinately above all other things and in death are burdened by the kind of meaningless dead weight to which they were excessively devoted in life. In their incessant struggle the adherents of each extreme serve to punish the other. When Dante tries in vain to recognize anyone among the crowd of sinners, Virgil explains

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that most of the souls in this round are priests, bishops, or other corrupt members of the clergy, but that the intensity of their sins and punishment has made them unrecognizable. Dante now asks Virgil to explain the role of FORTUNE, whose goods both sets of sinners in this round coveted so highly. The figure of Fortune was often depicted—as in Boethius’s influential Consolation of Philosophy—as a pagan deity who, through her randomly spinning wheel, allotted her gifts (wealth, power, fame) haphazardly among human beings. But according to Virgil, Fortune serves a rational function within God’s universal providence. Virgil describes Fortune’s role in the redistribution of wealth among nations and families as a divinely ordained office. It is now past midnight on Good Friday, so the poets have been traveling for some six hours and so move on more quickly. They arrive at the River Styx, pictured as a dark swamp. The river itself is the fifth circle of Hell, and as the poets walk around it they witness a crowd of shades mired in the marshy slime, violently attacking one another. These are the souls of the wrathful. Virgil also draws Dante’s attention to bubbles rising through the muddy bog. These, he tells the pilgrim, emerge from the souls of the sullen, who lie completely submerged beneath the sludge. The bubbles leave their mouths as they burble an unintelligible, hopeless parody of a hymn. Having skirted the swamp, the poets reach the foot of a high tower, a part of the walls surrounding the infernal city of Dis. They have completed their journey through Upper Hell. Commentary The contrapasso of circle two is fairly clear: In life the lustful were caught up and swept away by their own passions, so in death they are buffeted eternally by these strong infernal winds. Dante himself, author of numerous poems extolling love—and the faithful (though unrequited) lover of Beatrice, another man’s wife—may have been particularly aware of the intricacies of this particular sin, though Dante probably would have distinguished between his own noble love for Beatrice and the kind of unbridled lust represented by the debauched Assyrian empress

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Semiramis described in this canto. Still the character of the pilgrim Dante expresses profound pity for the lovers’ shades in circle two (ll. 70–72), and immediately afterward he speaks to the souls of Paolo and Francesca. The story of these two lovers is probably the best known tale in the Divine Comedy, and as the pilgrim Dante does, most readers find it the most sympathetic story in the Inferno. After Dante’s introduction of the lovers into European literature, the two became legendary, so much so that, for example, there are 42 novels in German alone dealing with their romance. According to legend, the handsome Paolo was sent to arrange a marriage between Francesca and his crippled brother, Giovanni Malatesta of Rimini (known as Giovanni the Lame). Thinking the emissary was the proposed husband, Francesca fell in love with Paolo at first sight. When he became aware of their affair, Giovanni sought to kill Paolo by a sword thrust that went through Paolo’s body and killed Francesca as well. The grieving Giovanni buried them in the same tomb. That was the legend. In fact Giovanni (who was somewhat deformed but a valiant soldier) made a political marriage to Francesca, daughter of Guido da Polenta of Ravenna, in 1275. She became enamored of her husband’s younger brother, Paolo, after moving to Rimini, though in 1275 the 40-yearold Paolo was married and had two children. The affair was carried on for several years, and when Giovanni burst into their bedroom and killed both of them around 1285, Francesca also had a nineyear-old daughter. Francesca’s story so moves the pilgrim Dante that he swoons. She begins by describing her love in conventional medieval fashion, speaking of how love takes form in the “gentle heart” (l. 100) (she thus uses terms Dante himself had used in his love poetry, borrowed from the famous canzone “The Gentle Heart” by GUIDO GUINIZELLI). She describes this love as irresistible, but when Dante questions her further, she reveals that she and Paolo were inspired to consummate their love while reading an Arthurian romance, a book that she describes as a “Galeotto,” referring to the character GALLEHOT (Gallehault), who in the romance encourages Lancelot and Guinevere’s love. Francesca also

suggests that the greater fault was her husband’s, announcing that “Caina” waits for him—that is, the circle reserved for those who are treacherous to their kinsmen (it still awaits because Giovanni was still alive in 1300, the fictional date of the Comedy). Despite her enticing words and the pilgrim’s pity for her, it would be a mistake to accept Francesca’s story at face value. Remember she is in Hell—to pity her is to question divine justice. Remember, too, that Minos tells Dante at the beginning of this Canto to be careful whom he trusts. Dante the pilgrim is making this journey so that he can recognize and reject sin, both of which he fails to do in Francesca’s case. Her story consistently shifts blame away from herself: first to the irresistible power of love, then to the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, then to her own husband. Never does she take responsibility, never does she express regret for the sin (only for being caught in it), and never does she repent. Like all other sinners in the Inferno, she is in Hell through her own will and actions. The fact that she and Paolo are inseparable has led some romantic readers to assume that their love has kept them together in spite of death and Hell. But in fact when Francesca refers to Paolo as “this one” and mentions that he will never be parted from her, it is more an expression of her annoyance than her love. Paolo himself never ceases weeping. The fact is that their togetherness is a part of their torment—they can never be free of the object of their sin. Dante’s swoon at the end of this canto reveals only that he has a good deal to learn. In Canto 6 the significance of the gluttons’ symbolic punishment is fairly easy to see. As the sinners went through life wallowing in food and drink and creating nothing but garbage and filth, so for eternity they wallow in the filth they created. Like those of animals, their appetites overshadowed their reason in life, so here in Hell they cry out like dogs as the monstrous Cerberus drools over them. Still the pilgrim Dante, having learned nothing from his mistaken sympathy in the previous canto, feels pity for the sinners he sees. Dante’s failure to discard his earthly view is suggested again in this canto when he names the five Florentine politicians whom he considers “righteous”: these are FARINATA DEGLI

Inferno

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The Circle of the Lustful: Francesca da Rimini (“The Whirlwind of Lovers”), from Canto 5 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National ArtCollections Fund, 1922.

UBERTI, TEGGHIAIO ALDOBRANDI, JACOPO RUSTICUCCI, MOSCA DE’ LAMBERTI, and “Arrigo.” All are lower down in Hell, he learns from Ciacco. Dante will meet Farinata in the circle of heretics in Canto 10, Tegghiaio and Jacopo among the Sodomites in Canto 16, and Mosca even deeper among the sowers of discord in Canto 28. Arrigo is never mentioned again, but Dante’s judgment is certainly called into question by his inquiry after these figures. The question of the special foreknowledge of the damned is raised by Ciacco’s political prophecy in this canto. Because the damned exist in eternity, they can see the future from this extraordinary vantage point, just as they can see the past. They cannot, however, see the present; that is why Ciacco must ask Dante for news of Florence. His prediction, like all the predictions of the damned, is com-

pletely accurate: On May 1, 1300, just a few weeks after the Easter weekend during which the Comedy is set, the White GUELPHs of Florence drove out the Blacks in a bloody confrontation. But less than two years later, in 1302, the Blacks were returned to power with the aid of Pope Boniface VIII, and that same year they sent into exile most of the prominent members of the White party, Dante included. Who the two honest men mentioned by Ciacco are is unknown, though many scholars believe Dante intended to refer to himself as one of them. Since Dante is writing the Inferno at least seven years after the fictional time of the story, he is able to have his characters predict future events with complete accuracy. One more comment should be made about Ciacco’s desire to be remembered on earth. Many

40 Inferno of the sinners here in Upper Hell express similar desires, since their memory is in a sense the only positive form of immortality available to them. Deeper down in Hell, however, sinners only want to be forgotten, since their deeds on earth can only make their names reviled among the living. In Canto 7 Dante begins by presenting the inarticulate speech of Plutus, whose inward rage makes him babble incoherently at the poets when they arrive in circle four and whose bloated importance collapses like an empty bag of wind when Virgil confronts him, a collapse that seems to represent the ultimate emptiness of Fortune’s gifts from the vantage point of eternity. The gurgling hymn of the sullen shades of circle five rounds off the canto by returning to the theme of inarticulate speech introduced in the beginning. It seems that speech, the means by which human beings communicate in society, is impossible for the shades of this circle, obsessed as they are with outward wealth or with inward wrath. They cannot communicate with one another; nor does Dante communicate with any of the shades in this realm. The allegory of the heavy weights, symbolic of worldly possessions, is obvious and a fitting punishment for the misers as well as the wasters, since both groups are in Hell because they misused and overvalued the gifts of Fortune. The medieval Fortune was always depicted with a wheel, a wheel at whose turning the goods of Fortune were redistributed. The misers and the wasters of Canto 7 roll their boulders at one another, then turn around and roll them the other way until they meet again. It has been suggested that in this way each group traverses a semicircle, essentially completing an entire broken circle together—completing, that is, a turn of Fortune’s wheel each time they push their weights against one another. Thus a part of their punishment is to complete the turn of the wheel that they tried to stop or circumvent during their lives on Earth. Dante deals with another contrasting pair of sins (wrath and sullenness) in circle five. Specifically why Dante put this second pair together in the swampy Styx is less clear. Some have suggested that the “sullen” who lie beneath the surface of the swamp represent those guilty of the sin of sloth; thus circle five punishes two of the seven deadly

sins—wrath and sloth. Most commentators, however, point to a distinction made by Aristotle and by SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, both of whom describe three types of wrath: There are the “choleric” who act out their anger violently (whom Aquinas called acuti), the “ill-tempered” who are vindictively wrathful (the difficiles), and the “bitter” who sullenly keep their wrath buried inside (the amari). It seems likely that the souls on the surface of the Styx who viciously battle one another represent the acuti, reenacting their antisocial behavior here in Hell. Those who lie submerged at the bottom of the swamp most likely represent the amari, who, as they hid their angry feelings in life, are now hidden completely in the swamp. As the sinners in circle four represented two contrasting aspects of the same sin—those who hoard or waste the gifts of Fortune—so the groups of sinners in circle five represent contrasting aspects of the sin of wrath—those who bottle up and those who extravagantly exhibit their angry emotions. This parallels the hoarders and wasters of wealth and may explain the grouping of circles four and five in this canto. As he reaches the border of Upper Hell, Dante displays a new reaction to the sinners that he sees. No longer overcome by pity for their punishments, as he was with Francesca and Ciacco, here the pilgrim has a more objective interest in the infernal shades. In part this may be due to the lack of communication, and by extension the lack of communal bonding, with the sinners in this canto. It may also suggest that Dante has learned something after his reactions in the previous two cantos, though in fact he will again have feelings of pity (and will need to be rebuked by Virgil for them) deeper down in Hell.

WALLS OF DIS AND THE HERETICS (CANTOS 8–11) Synopsis Before the poets reach the foot of the high tower on the edge of Hell’s fifth circle, Dante notices a mysterious flame on the peak of the tower. This signal is instantly answered from the darkness on the other side of the Styx, and immediately the poets are approached by the boatman Phlegyas, speeding toward them like an arrow. Phlegyas, legendary

Inferno    41 king of Greek Boeotia who burned down Apollo’s temple in a fit of rage, is here made the guardian of Dante’s circle of the wrathful. Fittingly he is overcome by anger when he finds that he must transport a living soul across the Styx, but Virgil is once again successful in persuading the reluctant infernal guardian to give them passage in his boat. As the poets cross the muddy waters, one of the wrathful souls rears up and accosts the pilgrims. Though the shade is covered with slime, Dante recognizes him as the Florentine Filippo Argenti, a haughty Black Guelph who according to legend once slapped the poet Dante in public out of anger. Seeing him here, the pilgrim addresses angry words at him, and when Filippo tries to grab hold of Phlegyas’s boat, Virgil pushes Filippo away. When Dante actually expresses a wish to see Filippo tormented even further, Virgil approves of Dante’s righteous anger and, in words recalling Luke’s gospel, blesses the womb that bore him. Meanwhile Filippo, thrown back from the boat, is savagely attacked and torn apart by the other sinners in the swamp. The boat now approaches the walls and red towers of the great city of Dis, capital of the Inferno and site of Hell’s lower circles. They reach the shore and are left before the iron gate, the only way into the city. It is guarded by a force of fallen angels. Here for the first time Virgil is stymied. He is unable to convince the rebel angels to do the will of God, and they slam the gate against him and Dante. The canto ends with Dante stunned and fearful, and a shaken but reassuring Virgil anxiously awaiting help from Heaven for which he has prayed. As Canto 9 opens, Dante is pale with fear, and when Virgil himself appears nervous and uncertain, Dante tactfully asks him whether anyone from Limbo, Virgil’s home in Hell’s first circle, has ever before ventured this deep into the Inferno. Virgil answers that he himself has: Soon after his death a witch named Elechtho restored him to his human shape and forced him to journey down to the very bottom of Hell to take back a sinner from that circle. Thus Virgil reassures Dante that he knows his way through this realm. But new terrors arise at that point: The three classical Furies appear on the city wall, pictured as creatures part woman, part reptile. They scream and tear at their breasts

when they see Dante, and they call forth the gorgon Medusa to turn him to stone. Virgil, warning Dante not to look directly into Medusa’s face, forces the poet to turn his back to the tower and for good measure stands behind Dante, covering the poet’s eyes with his hands. In a direct address to the reader, Dante the poet here reminds his audience that they must interpret these events allegorically. Suddenly a great noise frightens the Furies away and scatters the entire host of fallen angels. As Virgil and Dante turn in the direction of the blast, they see a heavenly messenger arrive in answer to Virgil’s prayer. The angel moves effortlessly through Hell, scattering all of the damned souls in his path and walking across the water of the Styx as if it were dry land. The angel encounters no resistance as, with a wave of a small wand, he opens the gates of Dis to allow the pilgrims to enter, and

The Styx—Philippo Argenti, from Canto 8 of the Inferno, by Gustave Doré. From Dante’s Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.

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Farinata, from Canto 10 of the Inferno, by Gustave Doré. From Dante’s Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.

before returning to Heaven by the same path, he chastises the rebel angels for their continued defiance of God’s will. The poets now enter the infernal city, coming immediately upon Hell’s sixth circle. Here are innumerable open sarcophagi, all burning with redhot flames, from which Dante can hear cries of pain and torment. Here, Virgil explains, are entombed the souls of the archheretics and all of their followers, whom Dante will encounter in Canto 10. Dante and Virgil converse as they move through the tombs of the Epicurean heretics, when suddenly they are interrupted by a voice calling from inside one of the sepulchers. The shade has recognized Dante’s accent as Tuscan, and as he stands up Virgil identifies him as Farinata degli Uberti, a great captain of the Tuscan Ghibellines at the bloody battle of Montaperti in 1260. In his proud bearing Farinata seems to disdain Hell itself, and when

he learns Dante’s lineage he recognizes the poet as a Guelph enemy. Dante responds to Farinata’s scorn by asserting that the Guelphs have learned to recover from defeat (as they had in 1266, two years after Farinata’s death), something the Ghibellines have failed to do. But as they speak they are interrupted by another shade who rises from the same tomb. This is Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, whose daughter had married Farinata’s son. Cavalcante is the father of Dante’s friend and fellow poet Guido Cavalcanti and has interrupted to ask, if it is the gift of genius that enables Dante to travel alive through the underworld, why his son Guido has not traveled there with Dante. Dante suggests that the reason may be that Guido lacked the proper respect for Dante’s guide (presumably Virgil, though since the “guide” mentioned is unnamed, Dante could be referring to Beatrice or even to God himself). Here Cavalcante, inferring from Dante’s use of the past tense that Guido is dead, swoons back into the flaming tomb. At this point Farinata—disdainful of all the souls around him—picks up the political conversation at the precise point where Cavalcante has interrupted it. The Ghibelline captain wants to know why the Guelphs had been so adamant in keeping his fellow Ghibellines in exile, and Dante responds that the brutality of Montaperti, in which 4,000 Florentine Guelphs were slaughtered in a single day, may be the cause. Farinata defends his political acts, reminding Dante that he alone of the Ghibelline leaders prevented them from razing Florence to the ground after Montaperti. (This is the first time in the Comedy that the name Florence occurs.) Then Farinata pronounces a prophecy, as his fellow Florentine Ciacco had: Dante himself will come to know the bitterness of exile, he claims, within 50 moons. Farinata’s prophecy stirs Dante to ask why the damned are able to see the future so well but seem to know nothing about the present—as Cavalcante did not know his son was still alive, and Farinata did not know the Guelphs now controlled Florence. Farinata tells Dante that this is actually a part of the punishment of the damned: They can see only distant things, so that when Farinata’s tomb is sealed forever on Judgment Day, the end of time, he will know nothing at all.

Inferno Virgil calls Dante to leave, but before he does he leaves word with Farinata to tell Cavalcante that Guido is still alive, and it was only his confusion about the shade’s inability to know the present that had prevented him from assuaging the father’s fears. Now moving more quickly through the sixth circle, Dante expresses his anxiety about his coming exile, but Virgil comforts him, saying all will be made clear when they appear before Beatrice. After the drama of Canto 10 one of the most prosaic cantos of the Inferno follows. In Canto 11 the poets stop at the edge of the cliff that separates circle six from circle seven and look down into the abyss, where they can see the three smaller—and deeper— circles: the seventh, eighth, and ninth. The stench that rises from Lower Hell is overpowering, however, so they stop for a moment to allow their senses to become accustomed to the smell before moving on. As it happens, they have stopped to rest at the tomb of POPE ANASTASIUS II (496–98), reputed in medieval times to have been beguiled by the deacon Photinus away from his faith in Christ’s divinity. So as not to waste time while their progress is delayed, Virgil takes the opportunity to instruct Dante on the hierarchy of punishments in Lower Hell. Drawing largely on Aristotle’s Ethics, supplemented by his Physics and the Bible, Virgil’s description of Hell essentially reflects the earlier division of sins among the she-wolf, the lion, and the leopard. The three lower circles, Virgil explains, punish the sins of malice, which include both violence (the lion) and fraud (the leopard). Circle seven is subdivided into three rounds, which punish, in turn, sins of violence against one’s neighbor, against oneself, and against God—the latter comprising sins directly against God (blasphemy); against God’s child, Nature (sodomy); and against Nature’s child, Art, or, more specifically, against human industry (usury). The sins of fraud, since they are directly opposed to love, are those most severely punished by God and so are reserved for the deepest circles of Hell. Fraud is divided into two types: fraud against those with whom one has no special connection—sins punished in the 10 bolgias or “pockets” of circle eight—and treacherous fraud against one’s family, country, hosts, or guests, and benefactors—these are punished in the bottom of Hell in circle nine.

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Dante wants to know how the sinners in the first six circles fit into this pattern. Virgil somewhat testily refers Dante to Aristotle’s Ethics, a text the pilgrim seems to have forgotten. He explains that these sins of incontinence, because they are the result of the weakness of human will rather than cold-blooded calculation, offend God less than those punished in Lower Hell, within the walls of Dis. Not yet content, Dante the citizen of Florence—city of burgeoning capitalism—wants to know why usury is considered a sin. Virgil, drawing on both Aristotle and the Bible, explains that making money in the form of interest is a violation of God’s law that human beings should live by their own industry. At this point having rested enough, and somehow aware of the movement of the stars that indicates it is now 3:00 A.M. Holy Saturday,

The Stygian Lake with the angry sinners fighting, from Canto 7 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

44 Inferno Virgil urges Dante onward, and the poets move toward the seventh circle and the sins of violence. Commentary In the first part of Canto 8 Dante’s use of Phlegyas as guardian of circle five is curious. Dante is the first to portray him in this role: Previous classical authors, such as Virgil, had described his torments in the deepest part of Tartarus. According to myth Apollo had raped Phlegyas’s daughter, Cononis, and in retaliation the enraged Phlegyas had burned down the god’s temple. Dante sees Phlegyas as a personification of rage itself, and therefore an appropriate guardian for the fifth circle. More dramatic, and more disturbing, is the poets’ encounter with Filippo Argenti. Filippo had been a Black Guelph and therefore opposed to Dante’s party and had apparently publicly struck Dante the poet. Furthermore Filippo’s brother seems to have received Dante’s property after the poet’s exile from Florence. Thus it is possible that Dante is simply taking this opportunity to vent his own anger at a political and personal enemy. But it seems likely there is far more in this exchange than this personal motive. Dante the pilgrim, who had fainted with sympathy for Francesca and had even pitied the gluttonous Ciacco, here directs an angry outburst against the haughty Filipo and even expresses a desire to see him more severely punished. More puzzling is Virgil’s reaction to Dante’s anger, alluding as it does to Elizabeth’s words in praise of Christ, the fruit of Mary’s womb. What may explain Virgil’s reaction is his recognition of spiritual growth by the pilgrim: Dante so far has been blinded to the nature of sin by sympathizing with the sinners. Filippo is one sinner for whom Dante feels no sympathy. The reader probably must trust Virgil at this point and assume that the guide has sensed a righteous anger in the pilgrim, so that Virgil here commends Dante not for any petty personal bitterness but for chastising of the sin of wrath itself. From this point on Dante expresses sympathy for individual sinners much less frequently. At the same time Dante the pilgrim here himself participates in the sin of wrath. On the moral level the journey through Hell is the

recognition of sin—not only of its nature but of the sins within oneself. Here the pilgrim demonstrates his own wrath. The poets are about to enter Lower Hell, where the sins are more severe and where it is appropriate that Dante have no sympathy. Lower Hell is beyond the walls of Dis, a city described in line 67 as containing buildings shaped like mosques. Thus Dante relates Lower Hell to the Muslim world, a conventional Christian association reflecting the enmity of late medieval crusades. Here in Dis the sins of violence, fraud, and malice are punished—the sins symbolized by the lion and the leopard. The walls of Dis are guarded not by individual classical figures but by an entire legion of fallen angels—beings of great power and malice. Virgil is ineffective before these malevolent beings. Perhaps this is because the poets are about to enter a realm of more profound evil than they have yet encountered, the kind of irrational malevolence that Virgil, as allegorical symbol of human reason, cannot overcome. Or perhaps these fallen angels, in Hell for rebelling directly against God himself, will never of their own accord submit to God’s will (in the way that the lesser guardians above yielded to Virgil’s evocation of that will that lay behind Dante’s journey). In any case Virgil has asked for divine help, which the poets await as the canto ends. In line 94 of Canto 8 Dante directly addresses his readers for the first time in the Comedy. He will do this 15 more times throughout the poem. Here he asks the reader to consider his alarm at the rebel angels’ demand that he return through Upper Hell on his own. These direct comments to the reader are remarkable in helping to establish a kind of intimacy between the character/narrator of the pilgrim Dante and his readers, as he consistently asks his audience to consider his emotional state at various points in the journey. The exchange between Virgil and Dante at the beginning of Canto 9 suggests, allegorically, that human reason is limited in its ability to deal with evil, and that there are occasions when only divine aid in the form of grace can help. Perhaps one of these situations is suggested by the Furies, who assail the pilgrim from the walls of Dis. They are the traditional classical avengers of the most hei-

Inferno nous crimes, those that involved the violation of society’s most basic taboos (such as matricide, for which they mercilessly pursue Orestes in Aeschylus’s Orestia). Thus the Furies, a kind of infernal counterpart to the three ladies of grace in Canto 2 (Mary, Lucy, Beatrice), allegorically represent the remorse of a guilty conscience. The most striking aspect of Canto 9, however, is Dante the poet’s direct address in lines 61–63 to the reader to pay careful attention to the poet’s true meaning lying behind the veil of his allegory. Commentators are divided as to whether this passage refers to the incident that has just occurred (in which the Gorgon Medusa has been summoned and Virgil forces Dante to hide his eyes from her gaze), or to the events that follow (the descent of the heavenly messenger and his opening of the gates of Dis). It is not impossible that the passage refers to both, since both events have profound allegorical significance. Medusa, who turns all who look upon her to stone, is summoned by the Furies of remorse. She may therefore represent the sin of despair, the despair of God’s grace that would preclude one’s receiving of it. Thus just as Medusa would turn the pilgrim Dante to stone and strand him forever in Hell, so despair would harden the heart of the pilgrim Everyman and take away the possibility of his accepting Grace—thus causing his eternal damnation. The allegory of this scene is particularly important for the spiritual lives of Dante’s readers. But if the address to the reader refers to the following scene, it may be calling attention to a significant structural pattern in the Comedy. As Mark Musa has pointed out, the descent of the angel here parallels the daily descent of two angels to the gates of Purgatory in the Purgatorio, Canto 8 (note that, since the Inferno’s first canto is an introduction to the entire Comedy, Canto 9 is actually the eighth canto of the Inferno proper). According to Musa these two descents, plus Beatrice’s descent to the top of Mount Purgatory at the end of the Purgatorio, allegorically represent the “three advents of Christ” as described in Saint Bernard’s “Sermons on the Advents.” Bernard describes Christ’s first advent as his Harrowing of Hell, his second as the daily advent into the hearts of Christians, and the

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third as the Last Judgment. In this way the journey of the pilgrim Everyman encompasses all of Christian time and, in fact, as the inclusion of classical figures suggests, pre-Christian times as well. Thus the Comedy represents the journey of all human beings toward God. The descent of the angel into Hell suggests, allegorically, Christ’s descent into Limbo to save the patriarchs and virtuous souls who lived prior to his incarnation. In the same way the heavenly messenger arrives to free Dante, the innocent Everyman figure, from his entrapment and allow him to continue his journey. Canto 9 ends with the vast cemetery of the heretics. For Dante the term heretic referred more narrowly to those who would deny the immortality of the soul. These sinners are suffering within burning tombs that stand open. On the Day of Judgment, however, their tombs will be covered and sealed for eternity. Thus the contrapasso of this canto suggests that as these sinners refused to believe in the eternal life of the soul, their own souls would suffer the same fate as their bodies—they would be sealed forever in their burial vaults. The circle of heretics lies somewhat outside the general structure of Hell, since the heretics do not fit neatly into the threefold division of sins into those of incontinence, violence, and fraud. The heretics stand at the edge of Lower Hell, as the virtuous pagans of circle one stand on the brink of Upper Hell. Both are outside the general hierarchy of sins: The souls in Limbo are there because they did not know God; the souls in circle six are there because they denied God’s existence. Thus each group in its own way represents a form of spiritual blindness. It may be worth noting that the poets bear to the right at the end of Canto 9 (as opposed to their usual leftward motion). This happens at only one other point in the Inferno—in Canto 17 as they enter the circle of fraud. No commentator has convincingly explained why this occurs, though perhaps it is only to draw our attention to a major new division of Hell. But before entering it the poets must first pass by the Epicurean heretics of circle six. Epicurus, who founded his school in 306 B.C.E., taught that worldly happiness was the highest

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good—but it was a happiness based not on sensual pleasure but on the practice of virtue. By Dante’s time the followers of Epicurus were considered heretics because they implicitly denied the immortality of the soul. It may be surprising to find the pagan philosopher punished in the circle of heretics, since heresy seems a sin dependent solely on orthodox Christianity. But Dante believed that even preChristian pagans recognized (as Plato had) the soul’s immortal status. Thus Epicurus is here in circle six, as are his contemporary followers. One of the most dramatic episodes in the Inferno, Canto 10 abounds in misunderstandings. It therefore reflects the nature of the sin of heresy, which Dante seems to have regarded as uniquely a sin of the intellect, rather than of the will, as was the case with the other sins. Dante believes that the damned are virtually omniscient, having heard Ciacco’s prophesy in Canto 6. Both Farinata and Cavalcante assume that Dante understands their ignorance of the present. Thus Dante is confused when Farinata seems unaware of his party’s defeat and Farinata is shocked to learn of it. Cavalcante misunderstands Dante’s verb tense—denoting past time—and believes his son has died, a misunderstanding that stuns Dante into silence. Since a shared understanding of present circumstances is a necessary condition of mutual comprehension, nothing but confusion can result from this situation. The contrapasso in this circle depends not only on the fact that the heretics who denied the soul’s immortality are sealed forever in tombs, but also on the irony that those sinners who relied chiefly upon their intellect but now know only the future will, in the end, know nothing at all, since the concept of “future” will exist no more after the Last Judgment. One of the great ironies of this canto is that the heretics, relying solely on human intellect, cannot achieve any certain knowledge in Hell, without divine revelation. Farinata’s haughty demeanor suggests the intellectual pride characteristic of the heretics, while Cavalcante’s assumption that human genius is the only possible qualification for Dante’s remarkable journey suggests the same kind of misplaced rationality. Even Virgil himself, the symbol of human reason, falters intellectually in this circle, when he tells the pilgrim that the proph-

ecy of his exile will be made clear when he meets Beatrice: In fact it is not until Dante meets his ancestor CACCIAGUIDA in Canto 17 of the Paradiso that his entire future is revealed. Still Dante’s comment to Cavalcante that his son, Guido, did not make this journey because he held Dante’s guide in disdain is difficult to understand. Assuming that the guide referred to is Virgil, there are a number of possibilities. It may be that Guido did not admire Virgil’s poetry the way that Dante did. But on an allegorical level Virgil may represent human reason particularly in the form of poetic expression. In this symbolic journey that poetic wisdom is leading Dante to divine knowledge: Thus, as John Ciardi has suggested in his edition of the poem, Guido’s skepticism does not allow him to make this imaginative journey. Guido, too—Dante’s “first friend”—is apparently destined to end here among the intellectual heretics. Cavalcante’s love for his son may seem sympathetic here, though it is also a symptom of pride— his son is the preeminent poet and should be the one making this journey, not the lesser poetic genius Dante. But Dante the poet knows that though the pilgrim may be able to calm the father’s fears momentarily, his son in fact would be dead only a few months after the fictional date of the comedy—March 1300. Pride in family is ultimately as empty as Farinata’s pride in his political party—a party that, even as he boasts of it, has been decisively defeated. Dante’s own peaceful conversation with his enemy underscores the kinds of political reversals that occur over time: The victorious Guelphs, having split into feuding factions, will soon send Dante into exile; thus Dante can understand Farinata’s plight. Furthermore the Ghibelline Farinata and the Guelph Cavalcante eternally share the same tomb in Hell. Those who, as did the Epicurean heretics, put all their faith in worldly happiness—in things like family and country—will find that these things are transient as mist, and their immortal souls (whose existence they have refused to recognize) should be their chief concern. Canto 11, consisting mainly of Virgil’s description of Lower Hell and based largely on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics VII.1, might seem self-explanatory. Yet because of certain medieval Christian

Inferno interpretations and even misreadings of Aristotle, the analysis of the structure of Dante’s Hell is less cut and dried than might be assumed. For one thing Dante must include in his geography of Hell places for the pagans and the heretics—two categories that would have been unknown and perhaps meaningless to the pagan Aristotle. In addition Aristotle, dealing with the relative severity of sins, speaks first of sins of incontinence—those resulting from uncontrolled passions. In Dante’s scheme these are the sins associated with the she-wolf and are punished in the first five circles of Upper Hell. Aristotle then discusses malice and what he calls “insane bestiality.” Although Aristotle seems to have meant this as a third category of sin, medieval Christian commentators read Aristotle’s comments to mean that “bestiality” was another type of malice. Some analysts have accordingly suggested that the seventh and eighth circles—those concerned with violence and simple fraud—punish the sins of malice, while the ninth circle—in which treachery to family, country, and benefactors is punished—is the one associated with Aristotle’s “insane bestiality,” since these are the sins that are the most inhuman. It seems more likely, however, that Dante saw the sins of violence as a separate category, reflected in the symbolism of the lion. Thus the sins of brute violence are those reflecting Aristotle’s “insane bestiality.” The two types of fraud illustrate Aristotle’s “malice,” and thus the sins of the leopard. These kinds of sins involve the evil machinations of intellect and are thus less bestial than they are demonic: The deeper one ventures into Hell, in Dante’s system, the worse the sins are.

SINS OF VIOLENCE (THE LION) (CANTOS 12–17) Synopsis Dante and Virgil now enter the seventh circle, the circle of the violent, by making their way down a slope of rocks apparently created by a landslide. Virgil informs Dante that the slide was caused by the earthquake that shook Hell when Christ descended into Limbo to take the souls of the saved into Paradise. At the foot of the slope the poets are accosted by the guardian of this circle, the wild

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and raging Minotaur. Virgil taunts the monstrous half-man, half-bull by reminding him of his defeat by THESEUS, and while the beast bites itself in its blind rage, Virgil tells Dante to run to the pass into circle seven. The first ring of circle seven is a river of boiling blood, the Phlegethon, in which are punished murderers and others who committed sins of violence against other people. The river is guarded by a thousand Centaur archers, who shoot arrows at any souls who try to rise from the boiling blood. Three Centaurs approach the poets: Chiron, the mythic teacher of Achilles, seems to be in command. He is accompanied by Nessus, who in a jealous rage killed Hercules with a poisoned shirt, and Pholus, who in a drunken rage attempted to rape the bride Hippodamia at her own wedding. Chiron notices that Dante’s foot moves the earth as he walks and thus deduces the poet is alive, but Virgil steps in and, once again, convinces the Centaur that the pilgrim’s journey is willed by God. He requests a guide to help carry Dante across the boiling river to the next ring of souls, and Chiron gives the task to Nessus. As Nessus guides the poets to the ford, he points out several of the prominent sinners tormented in the boiling river. The more violent the sinner was in life, the deeper he is submerged in the scalding Phlegethon. Immersed up to their eyelids in the blood are the conquerors ALEXANDER THE GREAT and Attila the Hun, and these are joined by the 13th-century Ghibelline tyrant Ezzelino da Romano, whose atrocities were so infamous he was called the “son of Satan.” Farther on in blood up to his throat is Guy de Montfort, notorious for his murder of Prince Henry of Cornwall at a Holy Mass in Viterbo in 1271. Other sinners are chest-deep, waist-deep, or ankle-deep in blood, and, although Dante recognizes several, he does not stop to talk to any in this round. When they reach the shallowest part of the river, Nessus carries Dante across on his back and leaves the poets on the other side. He returns to his own duties as Dante and Virgil move toward the second ring of circle seven. Now on the other side of the Phlegethon the poets find themselves in the second round of this

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circle, a dense wood of gnarled black trees. This is the Wood of Suicides, the violent against themselves. It is the nesting place of the hideous Harpies, creatures with the bodies of birds and the faces of women. As they enter the wood, Dante hears cries of pain and sorrow but sees no tormented souls. He is puzzled until Virgil tells him to break off a twig from a nearby tree. Dante does so and is shocked to see blood trickle out from the broken branch and to hear the tree cry out in pain. In this round the disembodied souls of the suicides have been trapped for eternity inside the trees. The soul Dante has discovered is that of PIER DELLE VIGNE. In life he was a legal scholar, a poet of the Sicilian school, a statesman and close adviser to the Holy Roman Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA. After years of being the most powerful statesman in Europe, Pier was unjustly accused of treachery and imprisoned by Frederick and ultimately killed himself in prison. He asks that if Dante were to return to the world, he restore Pier’s reputation. His story elicits such sympathy from Dante that the pilgrim cannot speak, and Virgil questions Pier further on Dante’s behalf. How do the souls arrive at this place, he asks, and can they ever escape their imprisonment in the trees? Pier explains that Minos casts the souls of the suicides into this circle, where they take root and grow to be trees. The monstrous Harpies that nest here eat their leaves, causing them pain but also release, since the trees can speak only when broken and bleeding. At the Last Judgment, Pier says, the suicides will not be reunited with their resurrected bodies, since they rejected them in life. Therefore their soulless bodies will be hung on their branches, eternally reminding the suicides of their discarded human form. At this point the poets are interrupted by wild shouting and sounds of a hunt as two naked souls, LANO OF SIENA and GIACOMO (JACOPA OR JACOMO) DA SANTO ANDREA, dash into sight. Lano and Giacomo were profligate squanderers of their own substance in life and here in death are pursued by a pack of ferocious black dogs. Giacomo, unable to keep up, throws himself into a thorn bush to hide, but the dogs overtake him and tear him limb from limb, finally running off with pieces of him in their

mouths. Thus the ring of suicides punishes not only those who took their own lives, but also those who violently destroyed their own property. Now the broken bush in which Giacomo had hidden begins to lament. It is the soul of an unnamed Florentine who hanged himself in his own home. The soul identifies himself as a citizen of that city, which had forsaken its first patron, Mars, for a new Christian patron, SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST. It was because of that slight, the soul claims, that the Roman god of war has never given Florence any peace, and the city would be destroyed forever if not for the vestiges of Mars’s statue on the ARNO’s bridge. As Canto 14 opens, Dante, out of feeling for his native city, gathers the damaged leaves and returns them to the anonymous Florentine suicide, and the poets move on. Reaching the edge of the Wood of Suicides, they look out at the third and last round of the circle of the violent. This is a great expanse of scorching desert sand, on which rains down a steady storm of burning flakes like a fiery snowstorm. On the sand are three groups of sinners, as described by Virgil in Canto 11. These sinners represent the violent against God: Lying stretched out in the sand are the blasphemers, those who cursed God directly. The largest group of souls are those who constantly move along the sand—these are the sodomites, the violent against nature, the child of God. Crouching hunched over in the fiery storm are the usurers—the violent against art (that is, human industry), the child of nature. Among the blasphemers, who are fewest in number in this round, Dante sees a great figure who lies supine in the sand with an attitude of scorn, disdaining to cringe or cry out against the rain of fire. Hearing Dante ask Virgil who he is, the figure calls out that he is the same in death as he was in life—he maintains his contempt for Jove. Virgil addresses the defiant figure as CAPANEUS and tells him that the violence of his own inner rage merely adds to the torment he feels in Hell. Virgil then tells Dante that this Capaneus was one of the seven kings who waged war on Thebes, and that he had died cursing his god from the walls of the city. The poets continue to walk along the edge of the Wood of Suicides, taking care not to step

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Capaneus the Blasphemer, from Canto 14 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

out into the burning sand. Eventually they reach another river of blood, running out of the wood and across the burning sands. When Dante asks about the source of the river, Virgil responds with an elaborate description of one of the most complex allegorical symbols in the Comedy, the Old Man of Crete. In the core of Mount Ida on the island of Crete stands an ancient statue of a man facing Rome. His head is made of gold, his chest and arms of silver, his midsection of brass, and his legs of iron, except for his right foot, which is made of clay. A fissure runs the length of the body, with the exception of the golden head, and from this crack issues a stream of tears and blood. From this stream are formed all the rivers of Hell—the Acheron, the Styx, and the Phlegethon, all of which join to form the Cocytus at the bottom of the Inferno.

In Canto 15 the poets encounter the second group of sinners in this last round of the violent— the sodomites, or the violent against nature. These sinners are forced to wander ceaselessly in groups under the burning rain, though Dante and Virgil are able to cross the plain unhurt by following the boiling brook of the Phlegethon. As they pass a group of sinners, one cries out in recognition. After some effort Dante is able to recognize the burned features of his former mentor, Brunetto Latini. Brunetto leaves his group in order to walk along the river beside Dante and Virgil. Brunetto, an important Florentine statesman and writer, had been Dante’s teacher in his youth. This unexpected reunion allows Dante to speak to his beloved adviser one more time. The affection and respect with which Dante greets Brunetto are greater than are shown any other sinner in

50 Inferno the Inferno: It was Brunetto, Dante says, who first taught him how a man can make himself immortal—referring most probably to Brunetto’s literary efforts in his Trésor. When Brunetto learns why Dante is making this journey through the afterlife, he utters another prophecy about Dante’s future: The citizens of Florence (whom he calls “wild beasts”) will become his enemies, Brunetto tells him, but ultimately he will be greatly honored. Dante answers that he has heard this prophecy before and that he will present the prophecies he has heard to “a lady” (Beatrice) whom he will meet in Paradise. In any case, Dante concludes, Fortune will do as she wills. Virgil seems to approve of this comment, but Dante continues, asking Brunetto the names of some of the other sinners in his band. Brunetto indicates that all of them were scholars and clerics and points out the Latin grammarian Priscian, the Florentine lawyer FRANCESCO D’ACCORSO, and the Florentine bishop Andrea de’ Mozzi. Finally, seeing the approach of another band with whom he is not allowed to mingle, Brunetto bids Dante farewell, asking only that he remember his Trésor, and takes off running across the burning sands to reunite with his own group. The last image of Brunetto is a positive one, as Dante compares him to the winner of a footrace. As Dante and Virgil continue through the seventh circle, they begin to hear the distant sound of a waterfall, where the Phlegethon River they have been following plunges over a cliff into the eighth circle. But as another group of constantly moving sodomites passes them, three souls break away from the band and run toward Dante. They have recognized him as a Florentine from his clothing and are eager to hear news of their native city. Virgil tells Dante that he should treat these three as souls worthy of respect, since they were great figures on earth. When the three shades reach the poets, they form a wheel by holding onto one another and constantly turning—a ploy that allows them to keep moving even as they address the poets. The fiery rain has so damaged the features of the three spirits as to render them unrecognizable, so they must introduce themselves. The trio’s spokesman is JACOPO RUSTICUCCI, a Florentine with a

reputation as a valiant knight, who tells Dante that his own shrewish wife drove him to the sin of sodomy. Jacopo introduces his companions as GUIDO GUERRA (a Guelph captain in a number of successful battles in the mid-13th century) and Tegghiaio Aldobrandi (another Guelph war leader). Their particular band of sinners might be considered warrior sodomites, as opposed to the intellectual sodomites of the previous canto. Dante seems to have held these leaders in high regard, since Jacopo and Tegghiaio were the citizens he had asked Ciacco about in Canto 6, only to be told that they were down among the blackest sinners in Hell. When he sees them, the pilgrim is moved to grief at their suffering. The three warriors ask Dante whether courtesy and valor still reign in their beloved city, and Dante answers with a lament about the decay of Florence, which he attributes to the influx of the newly wealthy from the surrounding rural areas who are displacing the old Florentine gentry and destroying the city through their arrogance and lack of restraint. As the three sinners move away to run back to their band, they ask Dante to remember their names. The poets continue until they reach the roaring waterfall itself, which Dante describes with a long epic simile comparing it to the falls of the Montone River in the Apennines. Here they stop, and Virgil asks Dante for the cord that he has tied around his waist. This is the first mention of the cord in the Inferno, although Dante tells us here that he had intended to use it to snare the leopard in Canto 1. Virgil takes the cord and drops it over the cliff, and Dante wonders what strange response will occur to such an unusual signal. The answer appears quickly, as a huge and terrible shape swims up through the darkness. As Canto 16 ends, Dante makes another address directly to the reader: He swears, by his Comedy (his first specific reference to the work he is narrating), that what he is about to say is true. As Canto 17 opens, the huge shape that approached the poets at the end of Canto 16 now moves into full view and lands at the edge of the cliff where Virgil and Dante stand. Virgil tells Dante to behold the beast that infects the entire

Inferno    51 world. This is the monstrous creature Geryon, a personification of the sin of fraud, with the face of an honest man but a monstrous serpentine body with hairy claws and a scorpionlike tail. At the same time Dante catches sight of another group of sinners, crouching in the burning sands of circle seven as they are pelted with the fiery rain. Virgil tells Dante to go and view these sinners so that his experience of this round may be complete, while Virgil himself negotiates with the monster for their passage down the cliff and into circle eight. The sinners squatting in the sand are the usurers, the violent against art as described in Canto 11. Their features are so obliterated by the scorching rain that Dante does not recognize their faces, but each of them bears a large purse hanging from his neck. Each sinner’s whole attention is focused on the money pouch before his eyes—just as it was

The Descent on the Monster, from Canto 17 of the Inferno, by Gustave Doré. From Dante’s Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.

in life—and all are unable to move from that position as the flaming precipitation pours down upon them and they try in vain to brush it away with their hands. The sinners are identifiable from the family crests that appear on their bags: A yellow bag displaying an azure lion identifies one sinner as a member of the Gianfigliazzi clan, a Florentine family of Black Guelphs. Another bag, red with a white goose, bears the emblem of the Ubriachi, a Ghibelline family of Florence. One of the sinners snaps irritably at Dante, telling him to go away. The blue sow on the speaker’s pouch identifies him as a member of the Paduan family of Scrovegni— scholars generally identify him as the notorious usurer Rinaldo (or Reginaldo) degli Scrovegni. Since Dante is alive, Rinaldo says, he wants him to know that his Paduan neighbor Vitaliano will soon join him in this circle, and as for the “sovereign knight” that the Florentines are expecting (probably Giovanni Buiamonte), Rinaldo sticks out his tongue as a gesture of scorn. Having learned what he could from the usurers, Dante returns to the cliff’s edge, where Virgil has already mounted the back of Geryon. His guide tells Dante to climb aboard the monster, and the poet does—sitting in front of Virgil, who is intent on shielding Dante from Geryon’s dangerous scorpion tail. Terrified, Dante climbs onto the beast’s serpentine back, and Geryon launches himself into the air, slowly spiraling down until he has deposited the poets at the foot of the cliff, at the edge of the eighth circle of Hell—the circle of the fraudulent, punishing the sins of the leopard. Having completed his task, Geryon flies off like an arrow shot from a bow. Commentary The rockslide that the poets encounter as they enter circle seven was not there when Virgil made his previous journey to the bottom of Hell. That is because it was caused by the earthquake that, according to the Gospels, shook the earth at the time of Christ’s Crucifixion (Matthew 27.51), an event that occurred well after Virgil’s death and, apparently, after his conjuring by the witch Erichtho. Virgil’s statement in lines 41–45 that he thought at the time the quaking was caused by the

52 Inferno universe renewing itself in love is an allusion to the doctrine of the pagan philosopher Empedocles. In a theory cited in Aristotle’s Metaphysics as well as in Saint Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle, Empedocles suggested that hate had destroyed the original harmony of the universe and had, as a result, created the individual elements of nature. Love periodically reunites those elements, but hate alternately plunges the elements again into chaos. The Minotaur was a monstrous creature, halfman and half-bull, who was conceived by the unnatural lust of Crete’s queen Pasiphaë for a bull—a sin that Dante would have included among the violent against nature who suffer in the third round of circle seven. The Minotaur, kept in the center of a labyrinth, devoured seven Athenian maidens and youths in an annual tribute until he was finally killed by Theseus with the help of Arachne, daughter of Pasiphaë and King Minos. The centaurs, half-man and half-horse, often are associated in classical mythology with stories of violence and rage. Thus the two guardians of this circle of violence personify the very “insane bestiality” represented in the sins of the lion. The contrapasso of the punishment in the first round of this circle is one of the most obvious in the Inferno: As murderers and tyrants covered themselves in innocent blood during their lives, here in Hell they literally wallow in it. The depth of the river even allows for a gradation of punishment, so that one who killed an individual may be tormented up to his ankles, while a tyrant like Ezzelino, reputed to have burned 11,000 at the stake, is submerged entirely in the boiling blood. It is interesting to note that while the Greek conqueror ALEXANDER THE GREAT appears in this circle, Roman conquerors like GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR are absent. Dante’s respect for and idealization of the Roman Empire do influence his choices here in Canto 12. Canto 13 begins with a series of parallel negative phrases—“No green leaves,” “no smooth branches,” “No fruit” (ll. 4–6)—a rhetorical device called anaphora by medieval rhetoricians. The repeated negatives relate directly to the theme of negation—the suicides’ negation of the gift of life—that pervades this canto. Having cast away

their own bodies, the suicides are denied them for eternity. Even at the Last Judgment, when Christian tradition held that all mortal flesh would rise again and be restored to the immortal souls that claimed it, the souls of the suicides would remain trapped inside their trees. As a part of their contrapasso the suicides are also torn and broken by the foul Harpies and are able to cry out only when bleeding and broken. Thus as the suicide itself is a final expression of pain, so in Hell the suicides’ only means of expression is through more pain. The rhetorical embellishments with which the passage begins continue as an undercurrent through the canto. At one point Dante says of Virgil, “I think perhaps he thought I might be thinking” (l. 25), a turn of phrase that seems unnecessary until we see similar rhetorical devices in the speech of the suicide Pier delle Vigne. Pier, a well-known poet of the Sicilian school, wrote in a style that featured rhetorical flourishes, and in this canto Dante puts lines into his mouth, such as his observation that court gossip “inflamed the hearts of everyone against me, / and these, inflamed, inflamed in turn Augustus [i.e., Frederick II]” (ll. 67–68). Thus Dante, who considered the style of the Sicilian poets artificial and therefore defective, anticipates Pier’s speech with the pilgrim’s own line (25) and imitates Pier’s style with the statesman’s speech. It should be noted that the pity Dante displays for Pier is of a different sort than his earlier sympathy for Francesca or Ciacco. Here rather than pity the suffering caused by Pier’s just punishment, Dante feels sympathy because of the unjust accusations that caused Pier’s downfall. Thus it is now injustice, rather than justice, that rouses the pilgrim’s emotions. It seems likely that Dante got the idea for the suicides’ punishment directly from Virgil’s Aeneid, in which, in a scene Virgil alludes to in this canto (Aeneid 3.22–43), Aeneas breaks a branch off a shrub and is stunned to see blood pour from the shrub’s broken point. At the same time he hears the voice of Polydorus, a Trojan prince, speaking from the ground beneath the shrub, where he lies buried. Turning what Virgil presents as a marvelous occurrence into the just punishment for suicide is Dante’s own innovation.

Inferno The Harpies, daughters of Thaumas and Electra in classical mythology, also appear in Virgil’s Aeneid, where they befoul the Trojans’ dinner and forecast further adversity for them. Pictured as monstrous birds with the faces of women and large, cruel talons, the Harpies of myth were known for polluting everything they touched. But they also had the reputation of being the “hounds of Zeus” and in that capacity seized the souls of mortals, carrying them to torment in the next world. Most probably Dante thought of them in this role and so places them in this round. But note that they also continue the motif of half-human monsters (including the Minotaur and the Centaurs) serving as guardians of circle seven, underscoring again the “insane bestiality” of the sins of violence. The second group of sinners consigned to this round may seem redundant. We have already seen the “wasters” of Canto 7, paired with the misers and pushing large stones around circle four. But Dante clearly wants us to regard the sin of profligates like Lano and Giacomo as something different. The wastefulness of circle four is presented as one of the sins of incontinence and therefore should be viewed as a failure of will: The wasters lost their fortunes as a result of lack of self-control. The profligates of circle seven, however, are willfully reckless in their squandering: They do deliberate violence to their goods and therefore destroy their own property without remorse, merely for the sake of extravagance. Thus they parallel the suicides, destroying their livelihoods rather than their lives. Finally the unnamed Florentine suicide whose speech ends the canto is surely an allegorical symbol of the city of Florence itself. The soul’s suicide parallels the city’s internecine strife, through which the city seems bent on its own deliberate destruction. The metaphor of Mars’s anger seems a fanciful way of suggesting that war, the “art” of Mars, seems destined ultimately to tear the city apart. The statue of Mars alluded to did, in fact, stand on the Ponte Vecchio until 1333, when it was swept away by a flood 12 years after Dante’s death. The burning plain of Canto 14, where the violent against God, nature, and art are punished, is one of the more complicated contrapassos in

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the Inferno. The desert itself suggests sterility: One characteristic that for Dante links the sins of blasphemy, sodomy, and usury is that they are essentially barren and fruitless activities. Sodomy is sexuality without the possibility of reproduction. Usury is an act in which money—inanimate matter—reproduces itself unnaturally, as opposed to the natural earning of money through labor. Blasphemy, the sin most directly against God, is equally fruitless: As a defiance of God, the blasphemy of Capaneus and others like him can bear no fruit. The omnipotent God will squelch any such defiance before it takes root. Furthermore rain, which under normal circumstances regenerates life in the fertile earth, in this unnatural realm falls as scorching fire, burning the sinners with an intense heat suggesting the violence of their own sins. Capaneus himself, as Virgil points out, suffers as well from the twisted wrath of his own inner soul. Capaneus boasts that he is in death just what he was in life, but that is the case of every sinner in Hell, and it is in fact each sinner’s punishment. Their own sins that separate them from God cause them an inner torment outwardly reflected in the contrapasso of their physical sufferings. As does Capaneus, each sinner in Hell has willed his own punishment. That the pagan Capaneus, struck dead by the thunderbolt of Jove, should be used as the representative of the Christian sin of blasphemy may strike the reader as curious. Here as elsewhere in the Inferno, Dante uses a pagan legend to illustrate what he clearly saw as a Christian truth. But it seems apparent that Dante saw the classical world as a cradle of Christian civilization, and that although classical pagans lacked the advantage of Christian revelation, they were not exempt from natural law—one aspect of which was the recognition of God’s existence and attendant obligation to worship and serve him in whatever form they were able to conceive him. Thus Capaneus’s blasphemy is inexcusable, whether he is a pagan or not. The elaborate symbol of the Old Man of Crete that takes up most of Canto 14 is drawn from two major sources: The figure itself is from the Old Testament book of Daniel (2.32–34), where it is an image seen in a dream by King Nebuchadnezzar.

54 Inferno In that text Daniel interprets the figure with its layers of gold, silver, brass, and iron as a symbol of four successive kingdoms. Dante borrows the symbol but changes the interpretation, so that the statue reflects the four ages of man outlined in the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Ovid speaks of a golden age, which Dante would have seen in Christian terms as Paradise before the fall of man. Since human sin corrupted the world, Dante would suggest, there has been a gradual decay into a silver age, a brass (or bronze) age, and an iron age. There are a variety of interpretations for the feet of the statue, but it seems likely that the left foot, made of iron, is intended to represent the Holy Roman Empire, while the crumbling right foot of clay denotes the contemporary Roman Catholic Church—unable to bear the weight placed upon it, cracked by its own corruption and its involvement in the secular affairs of Europe. Thus one of the purposes of this elaborate symbol is to make a political statement about Europe’s need for a single world emperor, one who can bear the weight of European civilization and take away the secular power and responsibility of the papacy. The statue stands on the island of Crete, regarded in the classical world as the cradle of the golden age and as the center of the world, situated in the sea among the three known continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. From Crete sprang the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. The statue faces the west, looking toward Rome—the center of the Imperial and Christian worlds—and thus perhaps looks toward the future and a possible renewal. Its back is turned on the Egyptian city of Damietta—the East, perhaps suggesting the birthplace of religion, perhaps suggesting the contemporary Muslim world, perhaps suggesting the past. Dante has added the fissure that mars every part of the statue except the golden head. This may denote human sin, which has marred every age of man since Paradise. From this crack flow the tears of human history, all of the tears and sorrow caused by human sin, and these tears become the waters that form the rivers of Hell. Certainly one of the most elaborate symbols in the Comedy, the Old Man of Crete remains in some ways elusive in its meaning.

A reader who subscribes to the popular view that Dante uses his Inferno to settle personal and political scores, placing all of his enemies into Hell, might be surprised to find Dante’s old mentor Brunetto Latini in the third round of circle seven. Dante himself seems surprised, greeting his old teacher with the exclamation “Are you here?” (Canto 15, l. 30). This surprise may imply that Brunetto’s sodomy was not widely known in Florence, particularly as Brunetto was married and the father of several children and had in fact reproved homosexuality in his own works. One can only conclude that Dante was close enough to his old master to have been aware of Brunetto’s sexual preference, even if many other Florentines were not. Both Brunetto and Dante speak with great affection for each other, and Brunetto’s discourse in the canto is particularly delicate, one might even say dainty: “How marvelous!” is his exclamation when he recognizes the pilgrim (l. 24). This canto is filled with imagery that suggests the nature of the sin here punished. The group of men with whom Brunetto travels are first described as ogling Dante (ll. 17–19). Brunetto himself uses a good deal of fruit imagery as well as suggestive animal imagery in his conversation with Dante, calling the pilgrim a “sweet fig” that his enemies will seek to devour. Brunetto’s appearance introduces a theme that will become more significant as the Comedy progresses: In some ways Dante’s journey through the afterlife—and, allegorically, through his own psyche—is a quest for his absent father. Dante’s own father, ALIGHIERO DI BELLINCIONE D’ALIGHIERO (ALIGHIERO II), died when the poet was in his midteens, and in some ways the elder statesman Brunetto served as a father figure to him. Indeed Brunetto calls the pilgrim “my son” in line 31. Part of what happens in Canto 15 of the Inferno is Dante’s rejection of Brunetto as father. Dante clearly had respected and loved Brunetto. He addresses the older writer with the honorific title Ser. But Dante’s disillusionment with Brunetto is clear in this canto. It stems not from Brunetto’s sodomy per se, but from his general worldly attitude, which has prevented his repentance and therefore his salvation. This is an attitude that is clear throughout the canto: Brunetto, who had

Inferno    55

Brunetto Latini, from Canto 15 of the Inferno, by Gustave Doré. From Dante’s Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.

been instrumental in promoting classicism and humanism in 13th-century Florence, was famous for teaching rhetoric, for extolling philosophy as the highest discipline of study, and for pioneering the study of politics as a science. To Dante, his prophecy, taking a long historical perspective, looks back before the Black and White rivalry or the GuelphGhibelline wars, to ancient clashes between the original Etruscan inhabitants of Fiesole (the “wild beasts” of his prophecy) and the patrician Roman families, from whom Dante is descended, who settled and ultimately dominated the area. He says that Dante is one of the “holy seed” of Rome. He predicts, too, that Dante’s destiny will ultimately

be great honor. Finally Dante acknowledges that Brunetto was the one who first taught him how a man “makes himself immortal” (l. 85). What Brunetto-as-father taught was that immortality is gained through scholarly or literary achievement. He is the first sinner in Hell who states his entire name, as if intent on its being remembered. Somewhat unfazed by Hell (he never tries to rationalize his sin, as many others in the Inferno do), Brunetto is most concerned that Dante remember his Trésor. Thus Brunetto’s lesson is that immortality is conferred through worldly fame, that “holiness” is a matter of ancestry, and that scholarship is the chief end of earthly life.

56 Inferno Undoubtedly the honors he predicts for Dante after his exile are worldly ones. By the time Dante sees Brunetto here in circle seven, however, he has outgrown his old master. Through the guidance of his new father figure, Virgil, Dante has already learned (in Canto 7) that earthly goods and honor are in the hands of Fortune (to which he alludes in lines 93–96), and that divine justice has nothing to do with worldly glory. Ultimately Dante will transcend the influence of Virgil, too, as father, and in Canto 15 of the Paradiso he will meet Cacciaguida, his ancestor and ultimate father figure, who will make sense of all the other prophecies, exhort Dante to tell the whole truth in his Comedy for the edification of humankind, and demonstrate that true glory and honor are in Paradise, in the love of God—the true and flawless Father. Several questions are raised by the events of Canto 16. The first of these concerns Virgil’s respectful attitude toward the three warrior sodomites who break from their group to approach Dante. Virgil advises Dante to treat them with courtesy, and the pilgrim not only does so but pities their wretched punishment under the rain of fire. Scholars have remarked that the speech in this canto, of both Jacopo Rusticucci (spokesman for the three sodomites) and the pilgrim Dante himself, is elevated and courteous. Jacopo wants to know whether courtesy and valor still exist in Florence. Clearly the idea of “courtesy” is important in this canto. Courtesy (or cortezia) was an ideal colored by hundreds of years of medieval courtly literature and culture. It connoted, for Dante and his contemporaries, the ideal character and behavior of a noble person, including generosity, virtuous and refined manners, and above all personal honor, as Dante makes clear in his CONVIVIO (2.10.7–8). Both Dante and the three sinners display that virtue of courtesy in this canto, and perhaps it is the attribute of courtesy that Virgil recognizes in them that compels him to advise the pilgrim to treat the sinners with respect. Jacopo, Guido, and Tegghiaio were aristocratic knights, known for their personal valor and their patriotism, and Dante has admired them and their legacy all his life. Virgil, as human reason, values patriotism, honor, self-sacrifice, and

courtesy and recognizes these in the three sodomites; therefore he tells his ward to honor them. But surely the reader’s response in this Canto should not uncritically follow the pilgrim’s, or even that of his usually reliable guide. It should not be forgotten that when Dante spoke admiringly about these same souls to Ciacco in Canto 6, he was told they were among the blackest sinners in Hell. As Brunetto Latini does in the previous canto, these sinners fail to acknowledge their guilt—only Jacopo mentions his sin, and he blames his wife for it rather than taking personal responsibility. Like Brunetto, they are still concerned with the things of the world—that is, the fate of their city and their reputations. These are matters that are under the governance of Fortune, as Dante the pilgrim has just told Brunetto. What is admired by human reason, such as scholarly achievement, military achievement, and devotion to the narrow Guelph cause, even the worldly ideal of courtesy, must ultimately be transcended in the spiritual sphere. Salvation depends on other considerations. Dante’s condemnation of his native city may embody his rejection of the courtesy, martial prowess, and partisanship of the three Guelph sodomites. Rather than answer Jacopo’s question directly, he assumes the stance of an Old Testament prophet, raising his face to Heaven and addressing his diatribe directly to the city of Florence. Previously Dante the poet had put condemnations of his native city in the mouths of characters like Ciacco and Brunetto or had implied the self-destructiveness of the city through the anonymous Florentine suicide of Canto 13, or the decay of civilization itself (including Florence) in the image of the Old Man of Crete in Canto 14. But here Dante has his persona speak in his own voice to give an oracular denunciation of his native city. To the pride, envy, and greed with which other characters have charged the Florentines before, Dante adds the problem of the destabilizing impact of the influx of rural citizens and of the excesses and arrogance caused by sudden wealth. For the conservative Dante these economic and social troubles further undermined the Christian and Imperial Roman basis of the Florentine state. Much of the immorality of the corrupt city stems from commercial inter-

Inferno ests and the development of capitalism in Florence through the 13th century, issues that move to the fore in the following canto. In Paradise Dante will hear more on these matters from Cacciaguida. The most vexing question raised by this canto, however, is the meaning of the cord that Dante gives to Virgil as they stand on the edge of the precipice leading to circle eight. One interpretation is that it is simply a practical innovation: Dante needed something that Virgil could use to signal the monster Geryon, and the pilgrim’s cord was simply a convenient invention. Some have also suggested, on the basis that Dante was ultimately buried in a Franciscan churchyard (and with no other verifiable evidence), that Dante himself had once been a novice in the Franciscan order (perhaps after the death of Beatrice). The cord, then, would represent the cord traditionally worn by Franciscan friars. Neither of these readings seems satisfactory. The fact that although the cord has not been mentioned before, Dante draws our attention to it, saying he had intended to snare the leopard of Canto 1 with it, suggests that there is something more to this cord than a literal reading would imply. Since the cord used as a belt is essentially a girdle, it is possible that Dante is here alluding to Pliny, who speaks of capturing a hyena by using a girdle with seven knots. In such a sense the girdle is a symbol of strength, allowing its wearer to accomplish some important feat—in this case, to capture the leopard. But if this is the point of the cord, why does Dante allow Virgil to toss it away? Another idea is that the cord symbolizes chastity, and thus was to be used to catch the leopard, symbolic of the sins of incontinence. Having passed those circles of Hell, Dante no longer needs the cord. But most readers see the leopard as symbolic of fraud, the section of Hell toward which Dante is about to descend. And besides, Dante has been in the circle of the violent for several cantos—it would have made more sense in this scenario for him to have discarded the cord before entering the city of Dis. Early commentators on the Comedy saw the cord as a symbol of fraud: When Dante hands it to Virgil, it is coiled, symbolizing the twisted, serpentine nature of fraud itself; thus it is used to call Geryon,

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the monstrous personification of fraud. On the other hand, Mark Musa sees the cord as symbolic of self-confidence—a foolish sort of self-confidence that would lead the pilgrim to believe he could snare the leopard himself. Through reason (Virgil) the pilgrim loses his bravado. The cord, symbol of that naïve pride, naturally attracts the personification of fraud. Dante will receive a new girdle in the first Canto of the Purgatorio—this time a reed, the symbol of humility. Perhaps the symbol of the cord looks forward to the next circle in this way. But it would seem that, having just gone through a kind of rejection of the intellectual and political heroes of his youth, Dante may be looking back at Cantos 15 and 16 here: As the pilgrim divests himself of his cord and discards it forever, so perhaps (as Ricardo Quinones suggests) Dante is dissolving his ties to his native city (122). If the cord indeed symbolizes self-confidence, it may be the kind of confidence in the scholarly and military excellence of the Florentines he has just met in these two cantos that Dante here finally discards. The beast Geryon in Canto 17 is based on a figure in classical mythology who was king of the island of Erytheia west of Gibraltar. In the myth he was a giant with three heads and was the uncle of the three-headed dog Cerberus. He was ultimately killed by Hercules over his great herd of cattle. Medieval legends with which Dante would have been familiar make Geryon a Spanish king with a reputation for enticing dinner guests into his home only to kill them. It seems likely that this particular reputation was behind Dante’s making Geryon a personification of the sin of fraud. But Dante gives him a different physical shape, based partly on the book of Revelation (9.7–11), wherein are described locusts with the faces of men and the tails of scorpions. Geryon’s honest face belies his scorpion’s tail, and his reptilian torso decorated with colored rings recalls the coat of the leopard in Canto 1. At this major transitional point in the poem, as the pilgrim Dante prepares to leave the circle of violence and enter the circles of fraud, Virgil appears to be much more confident and assured than he was at the last major transition, at the gates of Dis (Canto 8), where he was nearly thwarted by the

58 Inferno rebel angels. Now he clearly convinces an unwilling Geryon to transport him and his ward to the bottom of the cliff. Virgil rides astride the monster like a poised horseman and sits between Dante and the monster’s sting like a protective father. Despite Virgil’s self-assurance, however, Dante’s anxiety as they spiral down to the floor of circle eight comes through in the similes through which he describes their flight. The poet compares their descent to two disastrous mythological excursions: Apollo’s son, Phaeton, who, having borrowed his father’s sun-chariot, lost control and burned the sky before Zeus, to save the earth itself from flames, destroyed Phaeton with a thunderbolt. Icarus, flying with wax wings invented by his father, Daedalus, to escape the Labyrinth of Crete, ignored his father’s warnings and flew too close to the sun, at which point his wings melted and he plummeted to death in the sea. Dante, putting himself in the position of Phaeton or Icarus, clearly feels his own lack of experience and confidence and fears for his life. As for the sinners of this canto, the usurers are the last described of the violent. Like the other sinners of circle seven, theirs is a sin reflected in the dry desert waste that allegorically represents their sterility. The reproduction of money—an inanimate thing—is unnatural and a form of violence against industry, the child of nature. Further their eternal gaze upon the money pouches hanging before them is a part of the contrapasso of this canto: As in life their focus was solely on their money, so in death they cannot take their eyes from the worthless pouches that hang from their necks. Further they are unrecognizable. Only their coats of arms identify them as members of noble families of usurers, but essentially they have lost their human identity by focusing only on inanimate gold. In this they are not unlike the misers and the wasters in Canto 7, who are similarly indistinguishable. After the rhetorically refined speech of Brunetto Latini and the courteous words of Jacopo Rusticucci, the blatant rudeness of Scrovegni the Paduan usurer in this canto is particularly jarring. In one sense it serves to startle the pilgrim into a realization of the true nature of the sins in this circle. Any lingering affection he may have for the worldly glories of his native city—the scholarly

achievements associated with Brunetto or the military glories represented by Jacopo—is wiped away by the indignity of the crouching usurers, nearly all of whom are Florentines, and who suggest the corrupting influence of the budding capitalism that Dante had condemned in his tirade against his city in Canto 16. Canto 17 is one of the few cantos in the Comedy in which the pilgrim Dante never speaks. Perhaps he is stunned into silence by Scrovegni’s jarring rudeness. Or perhaps the flight on Geryon’s back makes him too frightened to speak. In either case it is a canto in which the pilgrim mulls over what he has seen and learned in circle seven, and prepares himself for the rigors of Hell’s eighth circle.

SIMPLE FRAUD (THE LEOPARD) (CANTOS 18–30) Synopsis As Canto 18 opens, Dante gives a detailed description of the physical structure of circle eight. Called Malebolge, or “evil pockets,” the circle consists of 10 concentric ditches (or bolgia), each slightly lower than the last, so that the entire circle slopes downward to a deep central well that will ultimately lead down to the ninth and last circle. Each ditch is edged by two stone banks and is crossed by several stone bridges, each of which leads from the cliff wall across all 10 ditches to the well at the center or hub, giving the entire circle the appearance of a giant spoked wheel. It has been suggested that Dante’s description of Malebolge is not presented as exposition by Dante the poet but is rather a picture of Malebolge as Dante the pilgrim sees it, descending on the back of the monster Geryon—it is, in fact, an aerial view of the landscape. The poets begin to walk to the left, as they almost invariably do, along the edge of the first bolgia. Here they see two lines of naked sinners, one line moving in the same direction as the poets, the other line facing them. Both groups are being driven along by horned devils wielding whips, who beat the sinners without mercy. Dante learns that this is the bolgia of panderers and seducers. The line moving toward the poets is made up of pimps or panderers, those who broker sexual favors. Among these souls

Inferno    59 Dante recognizes one who tries to avoid his gaze. This is Venedico Caccianemico of Bologna, who admits to Dante that he tried to curry favor with the marquis of Este by offering the marquis his own sister. Venedico also maintains that this particular bolgia is full of Bolognians. At this point one of the devils whips him and forces him on. When Dante and Virgil reach the stone bridge that crosses the first bolgia, they climb up and Virgil tells Dante to look back, so that he can see the faces of the crowd of souls who had been walking in the same direction as the poets. These are the seducers, those who have used women for their own purposes and then abandoned them. Among these Virgil points out the soul of Jason, who seduced and forsook both Hypsipyle and Medea. Curiously Virgil shows a certain respect for Jason, apparently admiring him for shedding no tears of pain. The poets continue on the bridge and start across the second bolgia, where they are greeted with a noxious stench. Dante finds that the entire ditch is filled with excrement, as if all the world’s privies emptied into this one trench. Immersed in the foul sewage are the souls of the flatterers, those whose words were the verbal equivalent of the waste in which they spend eternity. Dante recognizes one of these shades, remarking with grim irony that he knew the sinner “when his hair was dry.” This is Alessio Interminei (or Interminelli) from Lucca, who owns himself to be a notorious flatterer. In addition Virgil points out to the pilgrim another shade, scratching herself with filthy fingernails: It is Thaïs the whore, infamous for her egregious flattery of her lover in a classical play by Terence. The poets spend little time here, and, having seen enough, they hurry on to the third bolgia. Canto 19 opens with an apostrophe to Simon Magus, the magician who in the Acts of the Apostles (8.14–24) attempts to buy spiritual power from Saint Peter and Saint John the Apostle. This was the first instance of the sin of simony—the buying or selling of ecclesiastical sacraments or offices. Dante saw this prostitution of the church as a widespread abomination that in his day corrupted the church hierarchy from the top down. He follows this initial apostrophe with another, this time

to Divine Wisdom, praising God for the just punishment that simoniacs endure in the third bolgia of Hell’s Malebolge. From the bridge that spans the third bolgia Dante and Virgil observe a rocky ditch pocked with holes that Dante compares in size and shape to the baptismal fonts in Florence’s Baptistry of San Giovanni. From each of the countless holes protrude the legs of a sinner, and the soles of each sinner’s feet are flaming as the legs kick in agony. Thus the simoniacs, who perverted their holy offices, are stuffed head-first into these fiery fonts in a perverted parody of baptism. Dante expresses an interest in speaking to the soul whose feet seemed to burn redder, and whose legs he notices are kicking more frenziedly, than the others. Obligingly, Virgil carries the pilgrim down the slope at the far end of the ditch.

The Simonists, from Canto 19 of the Inferno, by Gustave Doré. From Dante’s Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.

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Dante addresses the twitching legs, asking the sinner to speak if he can. But the sinner’s response stuns Dante, for the soul has mistaken the pilgrim for his own enemy, Pope Boniface VIII. The sinner reveals himself to be POPE NICHOLAS III. Nicholas admits that he was guilty of simony, using his position to enhance the wealth of his family through papal appointments. Now, Nicholas puns, just as he pocketed wealth on earth, here in Hell he himself is stuffed into a pocket. Mistaking Dante for Boniface, he believed at first that he had misread the future by three years because, with the foreknowledge of the damned, he knows that Boniface is due to replace him in this hole upon his death in 1303. When Boniface arrives, Nicholas says, he himself will be shoved farther into the hole, already filled with previous simoniac popes. Nicholas adds that Boniface will soon be followed by an even worse simoniac, POPE CLEMENT V, the puppet of the French king PHILIP IV THE FAIR, due to replace Boniface in 1314 and shove the previous popes even deeper into the rock. At this point Dante launches into a tirade of abuse directed at the sinful pope. How much, he asks, did Saint Peter have to pay Christ for his spiritual gifts? Nicholas’s punishment is well earned, the pilgrim asserts, and all churchmen like him cause grief for the whole world. They are no better than idolators, since idolators worship only one golden object, while the simoniacs worship hundreds. Finally in another apostrophe Dante takes the emperor CONSTANTINE THE GREAT himself to task, for it was he, according to medieval legend, who first granted a wealth of worldly property to the church. If it were not for the respect he has for the office of pope, Dante says, he would use even harsher words to condemn Nicholas. This is only the second time in the Inferno (the first since Filippo Argenti in Canto 8) that Dante truly lambastes one of the sinners he meets. His righteous anger pleases his guide, who lifts him affectionately and carries him up the rocky slope to the bridge that arches the next bolgia. After the oracular heights of Dante’s speech condemning the simoniacs, he opens Canto 20 with a very prosaic announcement that we are now in the 20th canto of his first book. Here in the

fourth bolgia the poets witness the punishment of the soothsayers or fortune tellers. Those who by means of magic sought to look forward beyond the limits placed on human beings are punished for eternity by a bizarre distortion of their human form: Their heads are twisted to look backward instead of forward, and these mutilated sinners walk slowly through the ditch, weeping so that their tears flow continually down their backs and between their buttocks. At the sight of these twisted forms, Dante weeps for pity—once again after his diatribe against the sin of simony, Dante seems to backslide into pity for the sinners. Virgil chastises his ward, clarifying the true nature of augury: These are people who, by trying to learn the mind of God, sought to bend it to their own will. Such evil, he tells Dante, is not deserving of pity. Virgil proceeds to point out among the group of seers four particular sinners from classical literature. The first is Amphiaraus, one of the seven kings who warred on Thebes (a companion of Capaneus from Canto 14), whose story is told in PUBLIUS PAPINUS STATIUS’s Thebaid. The second is Tireseas, the famous blind Theban prophet who was changed from male to female and back to male, and whose story Dante would have known also from Statius, as well as Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The third is Aruns, the Etruscan driver whose prediction of the Roman civil war and Caesar’s victory over Pompey is told in Book 1 of Lucan’s Pharsalia. The last classical prophet mentioned is Tiresias’s daughter, MANTO, whose story appears in the Aeneid (Book 10). Here, however, Dante has Virgil retell her story at some length. He describes the alpine Lake Benaco and its course ending in a lowland marsh. Here, Virgil says, the wandering Manto and her servants settled to escape all human contact and practice magic. Here she died, and later when the local people built a city on that spot, they named it after her: Mantua, Virgil’s birthplace. In his earlier version of the story Virgil had attributed the city’s founding to Manto’s son, Ocnus. Thus Dante’s character Virgil corrects the faulty version of the city’s founding that he had written in his own Aeneid, which he refers to here as his “high tragedy” well known to Dante. He urges Dante to tell the true story as he has just related it.

Inferno Now Virgil looks at some of the other sinners in the circle and names several other shades, pointing out Eurypylus, who appears in the Aeneid (2.114– 119) as one asked to learn from Apollo’s oracle the best time for the Greeks to sail from Troy. Virgil then mentions three modern prophets: MICHAEL SCOTT, a supposed magician and seer attached to the court of Frederick II; Guido Bonatti, an astrologer who served Frederick II as well as the tyrant Ezzelino (mentioned in Canto 12); and Asdente (“the toothless”), a cobbler of Parma reputed to be a magician. The canto ends as Virgil, once again revealing a knowledge of the movement of the heavens that itself seems magical and prophetic here in Hell, warns his protégé that the moon has set, and that they must hurry to the next bolgia. As Dante and Virgil begin to cross the bridge over the fifth bolgia, the poets look down into a trench filled with boiling pitch that reminds Dante of the caulking of ships in the Venice shipyards. Dante sees bubbles rising from the pitch but can see nothing beneath the surface. Suddenly Virgil shouts to him to watch out, snatching him out of the way as a black devil rushes by, carrying a senator from the city of Lucca. He tosses the sinner into the pitch, telling the other demons who serve as guards in this bolgia that he is going back for more, because Lucca is full of grafters. The poets have indeed arrived in the Hell of the grafters, those who used their position in pubic service to make money illegally. The devils who guard them are called the malebranche (evil claws), and they all carry grappling hooks. When the Luccan senator rises up from the pitch to float above, a hundred devils rake him with their hooks, telling him to keep below the surface or be torn to pieces. They remind Dante of cooks stirring meat in a stew. Virgil is concerned that Dante stay hidden from these demons and tells him to conceal himself behind a rock while Virgil himself continues across the bridge to negotiate their safe passage with the leader of the demons. As Virgil approaches, the devils surround him menacingly, threatening him with their hooks. Virgil demands to speak with one of them, and Malacoda (evil tail) steps forward arrogantly. But when Virgil convinces him that

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he and his charge would not have progressed so far without the aid of the divine will, Malacoda is deflated and agrees to allow the poets to pass his bolgia. Virgil calls for Dante, and the pilgrim moves out of hiding to join his mentor, fearful of the demons, who he says remind him of soldiers he once saw outside Caprona. When a demon called Scarmiglione threatens to stick the poet with his hook, Malacoda orders him not to harm the pilgrims. He then tells them that the bridge over the sixth bolgia is broken—that it broke, in fact, during the earthquake that accompanied the Crucifixion of Christ 1,266 years earlier. But the bridge farther along this ditch is still intact, Malacoda says, and sends the pilgrims off under the protection of 10 of his company, with the unlikely names of Alichino, Calcabrina, Cagnazzo (Big Dog), Barbariccia (Curlybeard), Libicocco, Draghignazzo (Evil Dragon), Ciriatto, Graffiacane (Scratching Dog), Farfarello, and Rubicante (Crazy Red). Dante expresses misgivings about their demonic escort, but Virgil reassures him, saying that the devils are a threat only to the sinners in that bolgia. As the squad prepares to move out with the pilgrims, they salute their captain by sticking out their tongues and making a rude “Bronx cheer,” while Malacoda answers their salute by farting like a trumpet. As Canto 22 opens, the narrator remarks, with tongue in cheek, that he has seen a wide variety of military salutes but never before has witnessed a bugle call like the one demonstrated by Malacoda at the end of the previous canto. Virgil and Dante move out with the 10 Malebranche demons assigned to see them to the next bridge over the sixth bolgia, and as they walk Dante keeps his eyes focused on the river of boiling pitch, better to witness the plight of the sinners immersed there. He notices the souls of many grafters squatting like frogs with their snouts barely out of the pitch, who duck back under the surface when they see the Malebranche pass by. Unfortunately one of these shades is too slow in darting back into the bubbling pitch, and the demon Graffiacane is able to snatch him with his hook. His hook twisted in the sinner’s hair, Graffiacane holds the grafter out, dangling him from

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Ciampolo tormented by the devils, from Canto 22 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

his pruning hook as the other devils prepare to tear him apart. At a word from Dante, who is curious about this shade, Virgil is able to forestall the torment of the sinner in order to interrogate him. The shade reveals that he was born in Navarre and served a Spanish aristocrat before taking a post with Thibault II (count of Champagne and king of Navarre in the mid-13th century), where he learned the sin of barratry (or graft). Suddenly the devil Ciriatto rips into the sinner’s body with a tusk. As the other demons chafe at being kept back, frantic to begin tearing their victim apart, their captain Barbariccia holds out his arms to protect the unnamed Navarrese, warning the others to keep away until the questioning is done. He then turns to Virgil and tells him to ask his questions quickly. Bearing in mind his ward’s own interests, Virgil asks the shade whether there

are any Italians below in the pitch. But just as he asks the question, the demon Libicocco tears off a piece of the shade’s arm while Draghignazzo goes for his leg. Barbariccia calms them down, and the Navarrese answers that he has just been speaking with the Sardinian friar FRA GOMITA OF GALLURA, who spends most of his time conversing with another Sardinian grafter, MICHEL ZANCHE. The poets’ interest in Italian grafters gives the Navarrese a chance to strike a deal with the Malebranche. He can lure several grafters out of the pitch for the demons’ amusement, he says, if the Malebranche will hide themselves. Then, he promises, he will give the secret “all-clear” whistle that the sinners use to let other grafters know it is safe to poke their heads above the surface. Cagnazzo is unwilling to trust the Navarrese, but the devil Arlichino wants to take the risk. As he turns to

Inferno hide, however, Arlichino warns the Navarrese that he had better not try to escape, because the devil’s wings are much faster than the sinner’s feet. But just as the group of devils turns, the Navarrese seizes his opportunity and dives back to the “safety” of the boiling pitch. Arlichino flies after him but is too late, like a hawk diving for a wild duck that dives below the water just in time. Meanwhile the enraged Cagnazzo flies after Arlichino to attack him for his ill-advised trust of the sinner. The two demons battle like hawks above the pitch and finally fall into it themselves. Now Barbariccia orders the other demons to rescue their two struggling comrades, and while tempers heat up among the devils, the two poets decide that this would be an opportune time to slip away and continue their journey without the demonic escort. As Canto 23 opens and the poets quietly move away from the angry Malebranche, Dante is reminded of Aesop’s fable of the frog, the mouse, and the hawk, in which the frog’s trickery ultimately leads to his being devoured by the hawk. The fable itself gives Dante pause, however: Because the Malbranche were tricked as a result of the poets’ request, Dante suddenly fears that the thwarted devils will turn their rage from the Navarrese to the poets. When Dante makes his fears known to Virgil, the elder poet answers that he has had the same thought and advises Dante that they escape over the ridge that leads down into the sixth bolgia. As they glance back, the poets see the raging Malebranche bearing down on them with wings outstretched. Virgil acts quickly. Taking the terrified pilgrim into his arms like a mother holding her child, the Roman poet slides on his back down the slope, holding Dante before him, until they reach the floor of the sixth ditch. As the poets look back up to the top of the ridge, they see the 10 angry devils glaring impotently down upon them: The Malebranche are unable to leave the fifth bolgia, since the divine will that placed them there as guardians also made them prisoners of that specific ditch. As Dante looks around the sixth bolgia, he sees an endless line of sinners marching in single file. Each of the weeping souls is dressed in a long cloak

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and hood, like a Benedictine monk. But Dante sees that the cloaks, which are a dazzling gold on the outside, are lined with lead, so that each sinner strains under the weight of his own lavish robes. These are the hypocrites, whose dazzling outside masks a burdened inner life. The poets, as usual, turn left and walk in the same direction as the sinners, but the burdened shades trudge so slowly that the poets pass several of them with every step. Dante asks Virgil to point out any sinners in the crowd who might be known to Dante, and at those words one of the sinners, recognizing Dante’s Tuscan accent, calls out to him to slow down so they can converse. Virgil advises Dante to alter his step so that the other can catch up. When the speaker draws up beside the pilgrim, he first watches Dante intently, then turns to the shade beside him, commenting that by the movement of his throat he knows that Dante is alive. The sinner then asks who Dante is and why he has been allowed to visit this circle of Hell. Dante replies only that he is a Florentine and is indeed alive, but then he asks the shade who he is and what kind of punishment he is bearing. The speaker identifies himself as CATALANO DEI MALAVOLTI and names his companion as LODERINGO DEGLI ANDALÒ. The two of them were members of the religious order popularly known as the Jovial Friars. Citizens of Bologna, they had been appointed jointly to the office of podestà in Florence in 1266 and charged to keep the peace. But their joint appointment was disastrous and full of civil unrest, including the destruction of the Gardingo district of Florence, where important Ghibelline families lived. Under their watch the Florentine Ghibelline party was exiled from the city. Recognizing the Jovial Friars as culpable in much of his city’s violent history, Dante is about to speak when his attention is suddenly drawn to a bizarre sight: In front of them, stretched out naked and crucified by three stakes to the floor of the bolgia, is a sinner over whom all of the other weighted sinners walk. Catalano informs Dante that this is the shade of JOSEPH CAIAPHAS, high priest of the Sanhedrin under Pontius Pilate, who persuaded the rest of the council that it was expedient for Jesus to die. Now

64 Inferno he bears for all eternity the weight of every hypocrite in this bolgia. Catalano tells the poets that Caiaphas’s father-in-law, Annas, and the other members of that ill-fated Sanhedrin undergo the same punishment, stretched out in other parts of this bolgia. Virgil, a citizen of pre-Christian Rome, has stopped dead in his tracks and stares in amazement at the crucified Caiaphas (since his last trip through these circles occurred before the Crucifixion of Christ, Virgil has not seen this striking sight before). Finally shaking off his astonishment, Virgil asks the friar where he and Dante might find an intact bridge by which to cross to the seventh bolgia. Catalano tells him that every bridge across bolgia six is in ruins, but that close by are the crumbled remains of one bridge that the poets may be able to climb up without much difficulty. Virgil smolders in anger at this, realizing that Malacoda had lied to him about there being an intact bridge the poets could cross from bolgia five. Catalano, however, is not surprised, recalling the proverb that the devil is the father of lies. The canto ends as Virgil strides off in anger, followed by Dante, whose admiration for the Latin poet is unabated. Virgil’s anger rather quickly dissipates, as Dante describes in an elaborate epic simile that opens Canto 24: As the warming sun melts a chilling frost on a pasture, Virgil’s countenance turns pleasant again. Now the poets begin to climb the rocky ruins of the crumbled bridge, their only passage into the seventh bolgia. Virgil gives Dante all the help he can, but the climb takes its toll on the pilgrim, and by the time they reach the top of the sixth ditch, Dante is exhausted and sits down to rest and catch his breath. But Virgil urges him to keep moving, for they still have a long way to go. The Latin poet tries to goad Dante on by appealing to his desire for fame (demonstrating, once again, his pagan value system). This seems to inspire the pilgrim, who snaps to with some enthusiasm. Now the poets cross the bridge over the seventh bolgia and from the top of its arch look down into that chasm from the far bank. From this vantage point they can hear a confused cry from the darkness below but can make out no shapes. Dante asks

Virgil to take him down into the pit, and Virgil agrees. Once in the pit itself, the poets observe a scene full of monstrous serpents and naked, fleeing sinners. Some of the snakes are curled about the sinners’ hands, tying them together behind their backs and knotting them about the loins. Other serpents chase the shades, who run about madly with nowhere to hide. These are the thieves. As the poets watch, one serpent catches a fleeing sinner and attaches its fangs to the sinner’s neck. Immediately the shade bursts into flames and is reduced to ashes. But just as suddenly, the ashes—like those of the phoenix—painfully reshape themselves once more into the form of a man. The reformed shade looks about himself in bewilderment, sighing with anguish, and Virgil asks the sinner who he is. The shade identifies himself as VANNI FUCCI, a Tuscan contemporary of Dante who was known as “the Beast of Pistoia.” Since Fucci was generally known as a man of violence, Dante is curious why he is here among the thieves rather than in circle seven, among the violent. Fucci, his shade reddening with shame, is reluctant to tell his story but seems unable to resist Dante’s question. He reveals that it was he who stole sacred items from the sacristy of Pistoia’s Church of San Zeno—even though an innocent man was convicted of the theft. The poets soon learn that Fucci’s shame is not over the sin he committed but over Dante’s seeing him in this miserable condition—and the knowledge that Dante will report what he has seen back in TUSCANY. In revenge Fucci—with the foresight of the damned that we have seen previously in Ciacco, Farinata, and Brunetto Latini—issues a veiled but disturbing prophecy about coming strife in Florence between White and Black Guelphs (a party split that began in Fucci’s native Pistoia). A bolt from Mars will cause a violent storm, so that none of Dante’s White party will escape unharmed, Fucci asserts, adding as a final sting that he has told Dante this deliberately to hurt him. Canto 25 opens with Vanni Fucci’s last words: Having taunted Dante with his prophecy, he now turns his vile invective against God himself, shaping his fists into “figs” (an obscene Italian gesture) and thrusting them toward the sky as an insult to

Inferno God. After this Dante is actually pleased to see the serpents of that bolgia wrap themselves around Fucci. Nowhere in Hell, the pilgrim asserts, had he seen the equivalent of Fucci’s blasphemy—not even from Capaneus, the chief blasphemer of circle seven (Canto 14). Encircled by two snakes, Fucci flees from the poets’ side, pursued by a centaur who gallops in, his back covered with serpents and a fire-breathing dragon. Virgil explains to Dante that this is CACUS, who is not with the other centaurs (guarding the violent in the river of blood in Canto 12) because of his theft of Hercules’ cattle. When Cacus gallops off, three other thieves (who turn out to be Florentines called Agnello, Buoso, and PUCCIO GALIGAÍ [SCIANCATO]), call out to Dante and Virgil, asking who they are. Before the poets can answer, one of

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the shades wonders aloud where the sinner called Cianfa has gone. Suddenly a six-footed reptile (who proves to be Cianfa) leaps upon the shade called Agnello and entwines itself about him. As Dante watches aghast, the two beings melt into one another like hot wax. The other two shades call to the melting one that he is no longer himself. A new creature emerges, made of the amalgamation of reptile and man, and quickly darts off like a lizard. Just then a small serpent (who proves to be another Florentine, Guercio) leaps up and bites one of the other two sinners and then, as the two stare at each other as if in some hypnotic trance, they begin to metamorphose in a swirl of smoke, each taking on the shape of the other: The man’s legs meld together while the snake’s tail splits apart, the

The serpent attacks Buoso de’ Donati, from Canto 25 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

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man’s skin becomes scaly while the snake’s softens, the man’s ears flatten and merge into his head as the snake grows his own, and so on. The newly formed snake now slithers off, while the new man gloats that Buoso will now be forced to crawl just as he had. Having now witnessed the full contrapasso of the circle of thieves, Dante the poet expresses the wish that his language has done justice to the surreal scene he has described. He also mentions that he has recognized the sinners, including FRANCESCO DEI CAVALCANTI (known as Guerco)—the new man who emerged from the snake that attacked Buoso—and Puccio Sciancato, the only one of the three original thieves to keep his own shape. Dante opens Canto 26 with a bitter invective against his native city. With biting sarcasm he addresses Florence, saying that her fame is so widespread that even in Hell five of her prominent citizens can be found here in the bolgia of thieves. He goes on to say that his early morning dreams (believed to be likely to come true) portend disaster for the city and expresses a desire to see those dreams come true. Now with Virgil’s help the pilgrim climbs up the boulders that lead back up to the bridge arching over the eighth bolgia. From here he sees in the darkness of the next ditch countless flickering flames that remind him of fireflies that a peasant might view from a hillside in the early evening. Virgil explains that within each flame is the soul of a sinner, burning in punishment. Dante replies that he had suspected as much and asks Virgil who is within the nearby flame with its tip split into two separate tongues. Virgil tells him that this flame engulfs a pair of sinners, Ulysses and DIOMEDES, united in death and eternal punishment as they were united in their hatching of devious schemes in life. In particular among other acts associated with the Trojan War (the theft of the Palladium from Troy, the uncovering of Achilles’ disguise that forced him to join the Greek army), they are damned here for the stratagem of the Trojan horse, by which the Greeks were able to topple Troy and set in motion the events that, in Virgil’s account of history, led to the founding of Rome by Trojan descendants, and the subsequent history of Italy.

Dante, thrilled at the idea of speaking with these greatest of classical heroes, asks Virgil whether that is possible. Virgil commends Dante for his request but advises the pilgrim to let Virgil address them himself, since they might disdain Dante’s words. Approaching the dual flame with the utmost respect, Virgil invokes the pair within by his own Aeneid, which celebrated heroic deeds like theirs, asking that one of them tell the story of how he met his end. At this the greater flame—the one engulfing Ulysses—begins to quiver and murmur like a candle in the wind, and finally words begin to issue from the tongue of flame itself. Over the next 52 lines Ulysses tells the famous story of his final voyage, one of the most famous sections of the Inferno and one that Dorothy Sayers has called the “noblest” section of the poem. When he had left the witch Circe’s island, where he had been detained for a year, Ulysses felt a restless desire to explore the world, to know the totality of human vice and virtue. With a small group of loyal shipmates, he sailed throughout the Mediterranean, until reaching the Pillars of Hercules (modern Gibraltar), beyond which human beings were warned not to travel. Undaunted, Ulysses exhorted his men with their Greek heritage—a heritage that demanded they seek the highest achievements of virtue (i.e., manliness or valor) and knowledge. To sail into the unknown sea beyond Gibraltar was to seek this excellence. With his comrades’ eager assent, Ulysses sailed south into uncharted waters. For five months they sailed, until they saw rising before them the greatest mountain Ulysses had ever imagined. But just as the crew began to celebrate such a great discovery, a strong whirlwind arose from the mountain and spun the ship around three times, finally sinking it under the waves. Ulysses ends his narrative by describing how the sea finally closed over him and his crew. When Ulysses has finished speaking at the opening of Canto 27, the double-flame turns to leave, with Virgil’s permission. But another flame steps forward immediately to address the poets, its tongue murmuring confused sounds. Finally it produces words, addressed to Virgil. The shade within has recognized Virgil’s Lombard accent and burns, he says, to hear of recent events in his home coun-

Inferno try of Romagna (recall that the damned, as Farinata had explained in Canto 10, know the future but know nothing about the present). He is, he says, from the territory known as Montefeltro in that region. As Dante leans forward to hear, Virgil nudges him, saying that since this sinner is Italian, Dante can be the one to speak to him. Dante answers the shade with a summary of the current political situation in Romagna (the area of Italy whose major cities include Rimini, Ravenna, Forlì, Imola, and Faenza). Although never free from the ambitions of tyrants, Dante says, Romagna is currently at peace. Ravenna, he says, is governed by the Polenta family (specifically Guido Vecchio, father of Francesca da Rimini, whom we met in Canto 5). The tyrannical Ordelaffi family rules in Forlì. Rimini is dominated by the Malatesta family, whose father and son Dante calls the Old and New Mastiffs. Imola and Faenza are ruled by the despotic MAINARDO PAGANO DA SUSINANA (OR MAGHINARDO). The city of Cesena, however, is ably ruled by Galasso da Montefeltro. Having answered what the shade requested of him, Dante now asks the soul for his own story. The pilgrim, fresh from Ulysses’ heroic speech, tells the enflamed soul to answer him so that the pilgrim may spread his fame on earth. But the tongue of flame roars at this, then responds that if he thought anyone would ever hear his story, he would not speak at all, but since no one to his knowledge ever returned to the world from this depth, he will answer without fear for his reputation. The sinner, who turns out to be the cunning Ghibelline captain GUIDO DA MONTEFELTRO, says that in life he was a man of arms. He describes his actions as a military leader as those of the fox rather than the lion and says that his craftiness made him famous. Late in life he decided to become a Franciscan friar to atone for his sins—a stratagem that would have worked had it not been for Boniface VIII, whom Guido calls the “prince of the New Pharisees.” Boniface made war not on Saracens or Jews but on fellow Christians—specifically the Colonna family, who opposed Boniface’s election and who were holed up in an apparently impenetrable fortress at Palestrina (25 miles east of Rome). Boniface, Guido says, persuaded him to put aside his

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vows and advise the pope in his war against the Colonna family. Guido was convinced when Boniface asserted that he would absolve Guido of the sin before he committed it. With this assurance Guido offered his evil counsel: Promise much but fulfill little. Guido does not describe the result of his advice, but Dante’s readers would have known the outcome: Boniface promised the Colonna a complete pardon, but once they had surrendered, destroyed Palestrina completely. In the same way Boniface’s promise to Guido proved false: At his death, the shade relates, SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI tried to claim his soul, but a black devil prevented Francis, claiming to have Guido’s name written in his book because of his false counsel. As for the pope’s absolution, the devil claims it is worthless, for no one can repent an act at the same time he is willing it. Thus the devil, through his own cunning rhetorical skills, wins the soul of Guido, taunting him for not realizing that the devil was a logician. When the flame has ceased speaking, Dante and Virgil move on, now to the ninth circle, where the “sowers of discord” are punished. As he looks down into the ninth ditch at the opening of Canto 28, Dante wonders who could do justice to such a scene, for below him, all stumbling in the same direction, are more mutilated bodies than were found on all the battlefields that southern Italy has seen since the time of the Romans. The poets first see the shade of MUHAMMAD, disemboweled by a wound stretching from his chin to his crotch, with his entrails hanging in the dust. Muhammad looks up, displaying his wound as he staggers past. Punished in this bolgia, Muhammad reveals, are the sowers of discord—those who caused schisms in life and here are themselves split apart. Muhammad points out his son-in-law, Ali, walking ahead of him, as Dante illustrates his opinion that, between them, Muhammad and Ali are responsible for the schism in faith between Christianity and Islam. Muhammad goes on to describe how a sword-wielding devil slashes all of the sinners as they walk by, mutilating them according to the degree of their guilt. By the time a sinner completes a circle around this bolgia, his wounds have healed enough for the demon to inflict them again. Thus these sinners are hacked

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Bertran de Born, from Canto 28 of the Inferno, by Gustave Doré. From Dante’s Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.

to pieces continually, over and over again, through all eternity. Before moving on, Muhammad asks who the poet is who stands watching him. Virgil replies that Dante is one not yet dead, who will be returning to the world. At this Muhammad gives Dante a message to give to Fra Dolcino Torniello of Novara: Stock up on food or he will soon join the sinners here. Fra Dolcino was founder of the sect of Apostolic Brothers, which would be declared heretical by Clement V in 1305 and ultimately be starved into submission in 1307, when Fra Dolcino would be burned at the stake. Scores of the maimed had stopped and looked up at Dante when Virgil announced that the pilgrim was a living man. Several now step forward to address him. The first, Pier da Medicina, tells Dante to warn Guido el Cassero and Angiolello de Carignano, two citizens of the small Adriatic town

of Fano, that they will be thrown off a ship by the treacherous tyrant Malatestino of Rimini so that he can gain control of Fano. Pier also shows Dante the mutilated shade of Gaius Scribonius Curio, who persuaded Caesar to cross the Rubicon and begin the civil war with Pompey—for his actions, Curio’s tongue is hacked off. Another shade, whose hands have been severed, identifies himself as Mosca de’ Lamberti. Mosca was one of the illustrious Florentines Dante had asked Ciacco about in Canto 6. He is in the Hell of the sowers of discord because it was at his instigation that the Guelph-Ghibelline feud was ignited in Florence in 1215 through the murder of the Guelph Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti. Dante quickly rebuffs Mosca, chastising him with the charge that he caused the death of all his family. At this Mosca runs off, mad with pain. Finally Dante and Virgil see the most bizarre sight of all: a decapitated body moving toward them, holding his own head in one hand and swinging it like a lantern. This is the troubadour poet Bertran de Born, who convinced the young Prince Henry of England to rebel against his father, King Henry II. Having separated the political head from the body politic, he now suffers the same fate in his own body. In one of the most memorable images of the entire Comedy, holding his head up at arm’s length to speak more easily to the poets on the bridge, Bertran declares that he is himself the perfect contrapasso. As Dante continues to stare at the mutilated forms of the schismatics at the beginning of Canto 29, Virgil chides him for excessive interest in these wretches and reminds him that time is short. The pilgrim answers that he was searching for one of his own family among the shades. He is referring to Geri del Bello, who had been killed in a blood feud with the Sacchetti family and was as yet unavenged. As Virgil moves on, he tells Dante to think no more about Geri—Virgil had seen him among the throng and had witnessed a threatening gesture he had made at Dante. Dante expresses regret for leaving Geri’s death unavenged. Having arrived at the bridge over the 10th and final bolgia of Malebolge, Dante hears piercing shrieks from the darkness below and is assailed as

Inferno well by a foul stench from the 10th pit. Then from the bank he sees a ditch full of diseased shades, greater in number than the sick at all the hospitals of Tuscany during malaria season. These are the falsifiers, the last sinners among those guilty of simple fraud. They languish in the valley, lying in every imaginable position on the bottom of the ditch and on one another. The shades are afflicted by every imaginable disease, too weak to move and suffering in all of their senses. As the poets move, as usual, to the left along the bank, they see two sinners leaning against each other, scratching madly at their leprous scabs but without relief. Virgil calls down to them, asking whether any Italians are in this bolgia. One of the shades answers that they are Italian themselves but asks who Virgil is. When Virgil answers that he is accompanying Dante, a living man, to show him all of Hell, the two sinners—and several others nearby—turn shakily to look at Dante. Dante promises to keep their memories alive if the shades will tell him their names and where they were from. The first sinner is GRIFFOLINO DA AREZZO, who convinced Alberto da Siena that he could teach him to fly, but when Alberto found he had been tricked, he had Griffolino burned as a magician. But Griffolino asserts he is not in the 10th bolgia for that act, but rather for his alchemy, a form of falsifying. At Griffolino’s story Dante turns to Virgil and asks whether he has ever known anyone as silly as the Sienese. At that the other shade joins Dante in mocking the citizens of Siena, mentioning the foolish members of the Sienese “Spendthrifts’ Club”—Stricca di Giovanni dei Salimbeni, NICCOLÒ DE’ SALIMBENI, Caccia d’Asciano, and a great fool called ABBAGLIATO (i.e., dazed)—who squandered all their inheritances in outrageous acts of excess. The speaker identifies himself as CAPOCCHIO, another alchemist burned alive in 1293 in Siena for practicing alchemy. Capocchio implies that he recognizes Dante, suggesting that the two were acquainted. Early commentators on the Comedy suggest that Dante may have known Capocchio when both men were students. Three other categories of falsifiers—that is, impersonators, counterfeiters, and false witnesses—

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appear in Canto 30, which continues the action of the previous canto from the midst of Capocchio’s speech. The canto begins with a long epic simile touching on the madness of King Athamas of Thebes and of Hecuba after the fall of Troy and declaring that their madness was never so ferocious as that of the two shades who suddenly race into sight. One sinks his teeth into Capocchio and drags him off, but not before Griffolino identifies him as GIANNI SCHICCHI, a notorious Florentine impersonator. The other insane shade Griffolino names as MYRRHA, who in disguise committed incest with her father, King Cinyras of Cyprus. When the mad impersonators have run off, Dante turns his attention to the other shades in the bolgia. He first sees the misshapen body of MASTER ADAM. Suffering from dropsy, his bloated body is shaped like a lute, his legs are weak and useless, and he complains chiefly of an unquenchable thirst. He is condemned to this bolgia as a counterfeiter, having falsified gold florins at the instigation of the Counts Guidi of Romena. Although tormented by thirst, he so blames the counts for his damnation that he says he would exchange a fountain of water for the sight of one of them being tortured in this ditch. He knows one is already there, and he wishes that he could move even slightly, so that he could inch his way along the 11-mile circumference of this bolgia to find him and see his suffering. Dante asks Adam who the two sinners are who lie close to him, and Adam identifies them as Potiphar’s wife, who falsely accused Joseph (Genesis 39.6–18), and the Greek SINON, whose lying words convinced the Trojans to open their gates and take Ulysses’ wooden horse into the city. The two false witnesses lie in burning fevers that give them a foul odor. Sinon, angered at being so introduced, strikes Adam in his swollen belly with a fist, and Adam answers him with a blow to the face. The two shades begin bickering. Adam curses Sinon for his lying words to the Trojans, while Sinon says that his sin was one act while Adam sinned with every individual coin he counterfeited. The two souls begin to curse one another while Dante listens, fascinated. Virgil suddenly breaks in, chiding Dante for listening to such vulgar squabbling and threatening

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to lose his patience. The pilgrim, shamed, does not know what to say. But Virgil, seeing the degree of his repentance, forgives him, telling him to remember in the future that listening to this kind of talk is degrading. Virgil’s forgiving words soothe Dante’s contrite soul as the two turn their backs on the final ditch of Malebolge and begin making their way through dim light toward Hell’s final circle. Dante can see nothing through the dim air but suddenly hears the deafening blast of a horn, more ominous, he says, than the sound of Roland’s horn at Roncevalles. When he looks in the direction of the sound, he begins to make out the shapes of what seem to be high towers, and he asks Virgil what city they are approaching. These are not towers, Virgil says, but giants, standing waist-deep in Hell’s final pit. As he

Antaeus sets down Dante and Virgil in the ninth circle, from Canto 31 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

approaches closer, the pilgrim sees this for himself: The heads and chests of several giants are visible above the cliff overlooking the ninth circle. As they draw close to one, Dante can make out his face and see that his upper torso rises above the bank to the height of three tall men standing atop one another. The giant tries to speak but his words are gibberish, and Virgil tells his ward that this is NIMROD, builder of the Tower of Babel (in medieval lore). Because of his pride humankind has no common language, and therefore he speaks words no one can understand; nor can he fathom the speech of anyone else. The poets move on to find a more approachable giant. They walk to the left a good distance before reaching Ephialtes, who rebelled against Jove. He is wound about with heavy chains. Dante says that he would like to see Briareus, a Titan who joined in the war against Jupiter. Virgil says he is farther off and bound just as Ephialtes is, at which the chained giant shakes like an earthquake. The frightened Dante moves on with Virgil to Antaeus, another Titan but one who did not join the rebellion against Jove. Virgil addresses the giant with great respect, requesting that Antaeus lift the poets down to the ice that forms the ninth circle at the bottom of this cliff—at the same time telling the giant that the living Dante is still able to spread Antaeus’s fame in the world. Without a word the giant lifts Virgil in his hands, and Virgil calls to Dante to grab hold of him. Comparing the bending giant to Garisenda, a leaning tower in Bologna, Dante expresses fear at the great height, but Antaeus puts the poets down gently in the pit and immediately stands up again like the mast of a ship. Commentary In Italian male means “evil,” while the word bolgia means both “pouch” and “ditch.” Dante seems to have chosen the term carefully because he wanted to suggest both meanings. The rounds of circle eight are certainly ditches or trenches that run concentrically around the central well. But the imagery of a pouch—a purse full of ill-gotten money—is also suggested, since the fraud committed by most of the sinners in this circle was motivated by greed. Dante spends the greater portion of the Inferno—some 13

Inferno cantos in all—describing the sins and punishments of this circle. Ten groups of sinners are punished here: the panderers and seducers, the flatterers, the simonists, the sorcerers, the grafters, the hypocrites, the thieves, the evil counselors, the sowers of discord, and the counterfeiters. These sins are categorized as simple fraud—that is, fraud without the complicating addition of malicious treachery, for those sins are punished deeper down in the well, in the ninth circle. The contrapasso involved in the punishment of the panderers and seducers relates to the fact that both sets of sinners used women virtually as slaves for their own purposes. Thus they were merciless in driving their victims to do their bidding. Now for all eternity the sinners are driven by the whips of horned devils, so that the users have become the used, the drivers become the driven. On a moral level the devils themselves may suggest the goading of the sinners’ own guilty memories. The long lines of sinners moving in both directions remind the pilgrim of the crowds in Rome during the jubilee year of 1300 proclaimed by Dante’s great enemy Boniface VIII. It is interesting to note that at the precise time of the fictional date of the Comedy—Easter weekend of 1300—crowds of people were in fact walking in both directions on the Ponte Castello Sant’ Angelo across the Tiber in Rome, being herded by authorities toward Saint Peter’s in one direction and toward Monte Giordano in the other. One notable difference between this eighth circle and the circles above is that the sinners’ concern with their earthly reputations is virtually gone. The souls this deep in Hell want only to be forgotten, so that from this point on it becomes much more difficult for Dante to persuade sinners to talk to him about their misdeeds. The first sinner he recognizes here, Venedico Caccianemico, attempts to hide from Dante’s gaze, hoping not to be recognized. Of course he does not want his pandering of his own sister to be remembered by posterity. But perhaps the shame of these sinners in Lower Hell simply shows them to be less self-deceived than those in Upper Hell—Brunetto Latini, for example—who seem to believe that their eternal damnation is of less consequence than their temporal reputation.

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This makes Virgil’s attitude toward the seducer Jason all the more questionable. It is curious that Virgil’s admiration of Jason has not sparked more scholarly comment, for this deep in Hell it seems incongruous for the pilgrim’s guide to revere one of the sinners, even if it is a classical hero the stature of Jason. But Dante the poet understood Virgil’s commitment to pagan Stoic philosophy, the prevailing worldview of patrician Romans of his time. Indeed, Virgil’s Aeneas is the literary embodiment of Stoicism: the sage who sees passions as the product of faulty judgments and follows logic and duty oblivious to the vicissitudes of Fortune. As the poets stand and look back from the ancient bridge that crosses the bolgia (which Dante calls, ironically, the vecchio ponte, like the famous Ponte Vecchio that bridged the Arno in Florence), Virgil expresses his high regard for Jason’s “regal aspect” as he walks with apparent disregard for his pain. Such lapses on Virgil’s part suggest that his classical humanistic values still drive his ethical judgment. Admirable in themselves, such values do not include what Dante would regard as higher Christian morality. This clarifies why Virgil’s home of Limbo lies not outside but within the gates of Hell. The fate of the flatterers in the next bolgia is humorous and scatological. The language of this canto, and of several others in the Inferno, would clearly be out of place in the Paradiso or even the Purgatorio, but Dante adapts his diction to his subject, and despite Virgil’s veneration of the regal Jason, Dante shows us immediately that Hell is no place of refinement or courtliness. While flattery may seem at first to be a relatively small vice, not meriting an eternity so deep in Hell, it is important to remember the consequences of flattery: Sycophantic flatterers who surround a prince or powerful lord and feed him nothing but flattering lies rather than honest counsel may lead him into tyranny, ill-advised war, and foolish vanity, leading a country to ruin. The appropriate punishment for flatterers is to immerse them in filthy waste, the physical embodiment of their valueless words. As Canto 19 opens, the reader is struck by a jarring new prophetic tone in the narrative voice. Certainly the voice of Dante the poet, this voice is also presented as that of the pilgrim Dante,

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Inferno

The Simoniac Pope, from Canto 19 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National ArtCollections Fund, 1922.

reacting with righteous indignation to the evils of simony that he has witnessed in Hell and that he recognizes are eating away the foundations of the church. Thus the narrator’s condemnation of Simon Magus is a heartfelt condemnation of the sin of simony itself. Dante would have known the legend of Simon Magus not only from the book of Acts but also from an apocryphal text called The Acts of Peter and Paul, in which Simon Magus challenges the disciples to a flying match. In a story paralleling the myths of Icarus and Phaeton alluded to in Canto 17, Simon crashed headfirst to the ground when Saint Peter crossed himself. There may be an allusion to this legend in the punishment of the simoniacs, whose heads are thrust into the earth. The simo-

niac popes’ upside-down positions may also mimic Saint Peter’s own martyrdom, when he was crucified upside-down—thus the successors of Simon Peter spend eternity in a grotesque parody of the apostle’s martyrdom because of their devotion to the incorrect Simon. The fire that burns the soles of their feet probably also parodies the descent of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2.3 as tongues of flame over the heads of Peter and the other apostles (Scott 303). All of this complements the more obvious contrapasso of the bolgia, wherein the distorted position of the sinners turned upside-down in mock baptismal fonts and the baptism by fire on their feet rather than the baptism by water on the head mirror their perversion of holy sacraments, and hence the church itself. It is in this vein that we are probably intended to read the curious autobiographical insertion about the incident in Florence’s San Giovanni baptistery: Apparently during one particular baptism, a child had become stuck in one of the fonts and to save the child from drowning, Dante had broken the vessel to release the child, an act for which, according to his account in this canto, Dante was accused by some of sacrilege. Most critics have taken this insertion at face value and assumed that Dante, concerned with clearing his reputation, simply took this opportunity to explain his actions. Others have added that here, as in some of the previous circles, Dante is concerned with the moral level of the allegory and is depicting himself as participating in the sin of simony in a curious way, in the only way a layman could. Pushing this further, it becomes clear that what is important here is not Dante’s justification of his action but his action itself as a metaphor for the sin of simony, which breaks and destroys the church just as Dante’s action physically broke the baptismal font and physically damaged the church. The chief sinner of this bolgia is Nicholas III, who, because of his greater power and responsibility, endures greater suffering than the other simoniacs. Writing these verses in perhaps 1309, Dante the poet was well aware that his own mortal enemy, Boniface VIII, was still alive at the time of the fictional date of the Comedy (Easter weekend in 1300), but he also knew that Boniface would die in 1303. Dante the pilgrim, confronted by the strange words

Inferno of Nicholas, who mistakes him for Boniface arriving three years early, stands astounded at what was certainly intended as a grimly humorous and ironic misunderstanding. Certainly the poet was taking this opportunity to strike at a political and personal enemy, and in retrospect the poet knew that Boniface would not repent or change his ways in the three years between his poem’s setting and Boniface’s death. Nevertheless a grim theological question is raised by this scene: Is the fate of Boniface, or Pope Clement V, whom Nicholas also expects, already sealed? Does Nicholas’s foreknowledge preclude the free will of Boniface or Clement to repent and ultimately save his soul from damnation? Are some sins simply irreversible once committed? Or is the foreknowledge of the damned faulty? These are questions that will become more pressing and more difficult as Dante moves deeper into Hell. As for Clement it is clear that the first draft of this canto must have been written during his Avignon papacy (1305–14), and the question of whether Dante actually published this portion of the canto during Clement’s lifetime is a difficult one. Even for Dante it was a bold stroke to place a reigning pope in Hell, though Dante never mentions Clement (nor any of the other popes in this bolgia) by name, calling him only a “lawless shepherd” from “the West” (Clement was from Gascony). Certainly Dante had no way of knowing, in 1309, how long Clement would occupy the papal seat, yet he has Nicholas suggest an approximate timeline for Clement’s supplanting of Boniface in the place of torment, suggesting that Boniface would be in this position for a shorter time than Nicholas himself had been (ll. 79–81). It seems likely that Dante returned to the Inferno to make revisions while he worked on the Purgatorio, and that he did not make final changes to this canto until after Clement’s death in 1314. As the canto opened with an apostrophe of condemnation addressed to Simon Magus, it reaches its conclusion with the pilgrim Dante’s address to Nicholas, in the form of a long rhetorical harangue—the first such formal speech by the pilgrim in the Inferno. Dante begins by equating the corrupted church (l. 106) with the Whore of Babylon described in Revelation 17, corrupted by

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fornication with the kings of the earth (as Clement was by Philip the Fair). The seven heads of the beast she rides represent, for Dante, the seven sacraments of the church, and the beast’s 10 horns the 10 commandments (Dante will return to this interpretation in Purgatorio 32). The pilgrim ends his sermon to the pope with another apostrophe, this one to Constantine the Great, Roman emperor from 306 to 337. According to medieval belief it was Constantine (baptized in 312) who first granted wealth and secular power to the church. Suffering from leprosy (so the story goes), Constantine was told by his pagan advisers to bathe in the blood of infants. Recoiling from such an abomination, the emperor approached POPE SYLVESTER I, who washed Constantine’s skin in holy water and thereby cured his disease. In gratitude for his healing the emperor made what became known as the Donation of Constantine. Moving his own capital to Constantinople, the emperor’s Donation granted the pope secular authority over all the Western Empire. This document—proved to be an eighth-century forgery by the Renaissance humanist scholar Lorenzo Valla—was unquestioned in the later Middle Ages and provided Roman popes the legal justification for their secular territorial claims. In his apostrophe Dante expresses the wish that the Donation had never been made, since it was the power and wealth provided by the imperial grant that led to the current greed and corruption within the church. The symbolic retribution of the soothsayers in Canto 20 is fairly obvious: In life the fortune tellers strained to see into the future, beyond the limits of human vision. Now in eternity they can only look backward and see only through eyes blurred by tears. It is the sight of their distorted bodies, their heads grotesquely twisted backward on their necks, that causes the pilgrim to weep as well, for pity’s sake. But Dante’s tears provoke Virgil’s anger. This is the first difficulty of the canto: Here the pilgrim, fresh from his outraged verbal assault on Nicholas III and the sin of simony in the previous canto, seems to slide backward into the kind of sympathy he felt earlier for sinners like Francesca in the second circle. Virgil, who reacted so warmly to that

74 Inferno rebuke by taking Dante in his arms, here scolds Dante harshly for his reversion. This is the first time Virgil has seriously rebuked Dante for these feelings. One explanation for Virgil’s reaction here is that in this canto, rather than expressing pity for an individual sinner like Francesca or Ciacco, Dante seems to question the form of God’s punishment itself. In a reprimand that puns on the words pity and piety, which in Italian are the same word (pietà), Virgil tells Dante that in Hell, pity must die so that piety may live. Dante’s pity is improper because it questions, even second-guesses, God’s universal plan. Virgil goes on to explain the true nature of divination. It is an attempt to see into God’s plan in order to avoid it or shape it to human will. Thus Dante’s pity for the sinners of this bolgia is his way of engaging in the sin punished in this canto. Virgil’s account also explains why, for example, no Old Testament prophets appear in this bolgia. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, they were sent by God himself to reveal his plan to the people. The prophets were doing God’s will, not trying to bend it. Besides it is important to remember that all of Malebolge is a circle of fraud: The kind of augury associated with necromancy or paganism (rather than true religion) is at best misguided and at worst sheer hucksterism. What complicates Virgil’s response, however, is his own medieval reputation as a magician as well as a prophet (the latter because of his supposed prediction of the birth of Christ in his Fourth Eclogue). It was in fact a common practice in the Middle Ages to augur the future by selecting random passages out of Virgil’s writing (a custom known as sortes Virgilianae). It may be to allay that reputation that Virgil elects to tell in this canto the rather lengthy story of the founding of his native city of Mantua. That description—Virgil’s longest single speech in the Inferno—seems to most readers a digression and has been variously explained by commentators, though there is no scholarly consensus on the subject. Perhaps the most popular explanation is that Dante, aware of Virgil’s reputation, wants to exonerate him of any suspicion of necromancy by allowing him to dissociate his native city—and

by extension himself—from any connection with divination. Thus he has Virgil change the version found in the Aeneid (where Manto’s son names the city after her) to one in which unrelated people from the area built the town at the place where Manto had previously lived. Virgil may have in mind the ancient custom whereby a newly founded city was named by a kind of divination through the casting of lots. Mantua, he says, was founded in no such manner. The fact that Dante has the pilgrim Virgil contradict the poet Virgil’s own account adds another difficulty to the passage. Some have suggested that it is Dante’s way, once again, of demonstrating the limits of the pagan poet’s knowledge at the same time he is defending his master against the charge of necromancy. More important may be the link this matter provides between this Canto and the previous one. In Canto 19 Dante insists upon telling the true story of his breaking of the baptismal font at San Giovanni, at the same time illustrating the nature of simony, which undermines and breaks up the church. Here Virgil is concerned with correcting the previous story of Mantua and revealing the truth. Virgil ends his long speech expressing a desire that truth be told without contamination, a comment that reveals and condemns the true nature of augury, which involves fraud, the contamination of truth by falsehood. Canto 20 ends with one more curious section, in which Virgil describes to Dante in some detail the precise position of the moon in the heavens, which reveals (as scholars have calculated) that it is now 6:00 A.M. on Holy Saturday, time for the poets to move on. Virgil’s interest in the spheres, as well as his ability to divine their movements from this deep under the earth, suggests a knowledge of astrology that would have been expected of Michael Scott or one of the other sinners in this bolgia. But Virgil has already dissociated himself from magical augury, and in this case Virgil’s knowledge—like that of the Old Testament prophets—seems to originate in direct divine inspiration. Cantos 21 and 22 of the Inferno, both concerned with bolgia five, have traditionally been referred to as the “gargoyle cantos.” If, as some early scholars suggested, the entire Commedia is structured like a

Inferno Gothic cathedral, then certainly it is in these cantos that Dante places his grotesqueries. It is here that Dante the poet uses his coarsest language in the poem. The bizarre behavior of the hideous devils and the grossly comic manner in which Canto 21 ends make these cantos farcical in contrast to the generally high seriousness of the rest of the Inferno. Part of the comedy of these verses is apparently a burlesque of the military, whose rituals seem to be satirized in the crude salutes of the martial demons, the Malabranche. This military imagery is introduced when Dante compares himself, walking among the fierce demons, to Pisan soldiers at Caprona. In 1289 Dante had taken part in the siege of the fortress of Caprona near PISA. When Pisan troops from the fortress surrendered to the Florentine and Luccan Guelphs, they had to pass among the enemy, no doubt as gingerly as the pilgrim Dante passed among the fierce Malabranche. Whatever his reasons Dante gives more space to bolgia five than to any other place in Hell. It is possible that the reason for Dante’s special interest in the bolgia of the grafters or barraters is that the sinners here are guilty of the very crimes Dante himself had been charged with, and for which he was exiled from Florence. Indeed the trumped-up charges that Dante misused his influence in public office for his own monetary gain prevented Dante from ever returning to his home city on pain of death. Only in this canto does Virgil make Dante hide—perhaps because Dante is in more danger here than anywhere else. His participation in this sin meant, for Dante, a death sentence. It may be, too, that the accusations of Dante’s own graft explain the vulgar humor of the canto. Perhaps it represents Dante’s opinion of the charges against him, and just how seriously they should be taken. The contrapasso in this bolgia is rather complex: The grafters spend eternity in sticky pitch, reflecting their own sticky fingers. As their deeds were done in secret, away from the light of day, so they must remain hidden in the dark pitch. As the devils try to spear sinners in the pitch with their grappling hooks, like cooks with a stew, so the grafters sought for their victims among the people, for whom they cared no more than for pieces of meat.

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One of the remarkable aspects of Canto 21 is its importance in determining the fictional date of the Comedy. When Malacoda tells the poets that the bridge over the sixth bolgia was destroyed by the earthquake that shook Hell, he says that that cataclysm occurred precisely 1,266 years ago as of yesterday, five hours later than the current time. Since we know from Virgil’s comments in Canto 12 that the earthquake occurred shortly before Christ harrowed Hell, it is clear that the quake alluded to is that which, according to the gospels, shook the earth at the moment of Christ’s death. Since in Dante’s time this was believed to have occurred at precisely noon on Good Friday in 34 C.E., that would mean that the previous day, the day on which the Inferno began, would have been Good Friday in the year 1300. Further the precise moment that Dante and Virgil are spending with Malacoda in Canto 21 must be five hours before noon (i.e., 7:00 A.M.) on Holy Saturday—in 1300, that date would have been April 9. As Canto 21 ends, Dante’s reluctance to trust the demons, and Virgil’s overruling of his ward, are noteworthy. What we see in Virgil in this canto is a confidence in the face of demonic powers that he was unable to muster at the walls of Dis in Canto 9. But his confidence here is misguided. As it turns out, Dante is correct not to trust Malacoda or his troops. The pilgrim has grown in his understanding of sin and its deceptive nature, so that here his understanding surpasses that of his master. If Virgil here is the allegorical representation of human reason, perhaps this incident suggests the fallibility of human reason when confronted with the blatant lies of the truly evil. Perhaps it is only a gut feeling, like that displayed here by Dante, that can detect such mendacity. Dante begins Canto 22 in a mock-heroic style, in which he considers with apparent seriousness Malacoda’s buglelike fart as a legitimate military salute. The usual effect of the mock-heroic (as in Chaucer’s “Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” for example) is the creation of humor through the juxtaposition of the trivial with the significant. Thus part of Dante’s purpose here seems to be the trivialization of the sinners and the demons in this bolgia. Much of Dante’s Hell is full of horrors, but here he implies

76 Inferno that the damned—sinners and demons alike—are essentially ridiculous. Without God these characters have no real claim to respect. Ultimately the devil is an ass. The chief event of Canto 22, the tricking of the demons by the anonymous Navarrese grafter, is puzzling to some readers. The incident does nothing to advance the plot of the Inferno—we already know who the sinners are and what their punishment is—so the incident of the Navarrese seems an extraneous episode included chiefly to increase the comic effect of the canto. However, there is more to this episode. The sinner from Navarre, about whom we know nothing more than what he tells us in this canto, demonstrates that he (like all of Hell’s inhabitants) is in death precisely what he was in life. The sin of graft or barratry is a sin of concealment, comprising dealings that take place illicitly, in secret—thus the Navarrese tells us very little about himself, even keeping his name a secret (some early commentators have given him the name of Ciampolo, but nothing in the text provides this identification). As barratry is a sin of fraud, the Navarrese engages in fraud to deceive the demons. Further barratry is a sin against society: It might even be called a treasonous act, since those guilty of the sin have betrayed the public trust in the positions to which they have been appointed. Thus the Navarrese offers to betray his fellow sinners in order to (literally) to save his own skin. Similarly the Malebranche themselves are distrustful of one another and engage in acts of deceit and treachery among their own group. Calcabrina, from the beginning of the encounter with the Navarrese, is looking for an excuse to fight with Alichino, and he takes that opportunity even at the expense of his group’s common good. Thus the guardians of this bolgia, like the sinners themselves, are selfish, deceptive, and treacherous—three aspects of the sin of barratry. Far from being superfluous, the incident of the Navarrese grafter is a demonstration of the sin in action. The fable referred to in the beginning of Canto 23 was in fact not one of Aesop’s, though it was attributed to him during the Middle Ages. In the fable a mouse arrives at a river and, unable to

cross on his own, asks for help from a frog. The frog, bearing some inexplicable ill will toward the mouse, agrees and ties the mouse to his leg with a long string, supposedly to prevent him from falling off. But after swimming out to the middle of the river, the frog dives below the water in an attempt to drown the mouse, who, tied to the frog’s leg, cannot escape. The mouse fights bravely against the frog until a passing hawk catches sight of him, swoops down, and snatches the mouse up in his claws. Thus the frog, still tied to the mouse by the string, is carried away as well, both of them to be devoured by the hawk. The lesson of the story is that those who seek to harm others will themselves be destroyed. Another version of the fable with which Dante may have been familiar occurs in the 12th-century collection by the French poet Marie de France. In Marie’s version the mouse escapes from the hawk, and only the frog is devoured. Dante says that the brawl he has just witnessed at the end of Canto 22 reminds him of this fable, asserting that the beginning and ending of the fable and the fight are exactly alike. But what Dante suggests is obvious has puzzled commentators for nearly 700 years. Just how the Navarrese grafter’s squabble with the Malebranche parallels the fable of the frog and the mouse is a matter of some debate. Some readers have assumed that Arlichino is the mouse and Calcabrina the frog, but since the mouse in the fable is completely innocent, it is hard to see the demon Arlichino in that light. Besides in that scenario who would be the hawk? Another relatively recent suggestion is that the two innocent poets, looking for safe passage across the sixth bolgia, are like the mouse, and the Malebranche represent the frog—like the frog of the fable, they come to a bad end. If Dante has in mind Marie’s version of the tale, the poets escape just as the mouse does in the end. But as Charles Singleton points out in his edition, when Dante the pilgrim makes this comparison at the beginning of Canto 23, he does not yet know that the Malacoda have deceived them, so a comparison of them with the deceitful frog at this point loses its significance. Perhaps the explanation that best fits the fable is that the Navarrese grafter represents the mouse (he is clearly not innocent, but in this instance he

Inferno does not seek to harm the devils). Arlichino may then be the frog, eager to destroy the Navarrese, and the other demon, Calacabrina, may be the hawk, pouncing on the frog while the mouse escapes. Of course this interpretation is not perfect either, since, unlike the hawk, Calacabrina ends up in the boiling pitch along with the characters of the mouse and frog. Perhaps the only thing that really works is the application of the moral to the situation: Those who seek to harm others have a bad end—although of course Dante and Virgil, who have sought to harm no one, are equally endangered here by the angry Malebranche. The punishment of the hypocrites of bolgia six is manifestly appropriate, reflecting the hypocrites’ sin of hiding their true intentions behind a false front that they show to the world. The elaborately gilded monks’ robes here hide the coarse and heavy weight within behind a pleasant façade. The monks’ robes anticipate the two Jovial Friars with whom Dante converses later in the canto—members of a sect infamous for its hypocrisy, as its members took religious vows but lived in luxury and sensuality. Further the hypocrites’ punishment seems to recall Christ’s attack on the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in Matthew 23.27, where he calls them “whitewashed tombs”—beautiful on the outside but inwardly filled with filth. This may well anticipate the Jews whom Dante places as the chief sinners of this bolgia—the crucified Caiaphas and other members of the Sanhedrin who condemned Jesus. Though they would probably have been Sadducees, Dante may well have associated Caiaphas and the others with the hypocritical Pharisees whom Christ condemned as whited sepulchers. Canto 23 ends with Virgil’s discovery that, contrary to what the demon Malacoda told him at the end of the last canto, all the bridges over bolgia six are shattered. Thus the action that began with the poets’ entrance into bolgia five at the beginning of Canto 21 has finally reached a conclusion here three cantos later and, as Mark Musa has argued in his edition of the poem (2, 311–312), the whole action of these cantos turns on a series of lies or deceptions (Malacoda’s lie to Virgil, the Navarrese’s lie to the Malebranche, Calcabrina’s hidden malice and plotting against Arlichino, the

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lies of Catalano and Loderingo to the people of Florence, the lies of Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin to the Romans and the Jews), thus underscoring the fact that lies and hypocrisy are at the heart of the sin of fraud itself. Virgil seems particularly fallible in these cantos, from his trusting acceptance of the demonic escort in Canto 21 (over Dante’s objections) to his fuming anger at his own mistaken trust at the end of Canto 23. Allegorically this may suggest how difficult it is for human reason alone to recognize malicious fraud, particularly when that fraud is in the guise of truth. The eyes of Reason alone cannot penetrate the gilded robes of hypocrisy and deceit. But of course Virgil is also angry at Catalano at the end of Canto 23: Catalano’s implication that

Dante and Virgil escape from the devils, from Canto 23 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

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Inferno

Virgil should have known better than to trust the father of lies is sarcastic and biting, and Virgil may feel some understandable pique at being lectured in the ethics of mendacity by a damned sinner. No wonder he stalks off at the end of the canto. And no wonder the pilgrim still expresses admiration for him, despite his very human errors. Of particular note in Canto 24 is Virgil’s exhortation to the flagging Dante after the poets have climbed the ruins of the bridge over the sixth bolgia. He advises the poet to apply the strength of his soul to overcome his fatigue. By such strength of will, he reminds Dante, men achieve fame—the one way to leave a permanent mark on the world, rather than the “smoke in wind and foam upon the water” (24. l. 51) that is all that lesser mortals leave. Since, as Musa points out, these two cantos focusing on the thieves are two of Dante’s most poetically ambitious cantos (2.317), it might well be argued that the poet is here highly focused on the way to enhance his poetic reputation, and so is particularly concerned about his own fame at this point. On the other hand it is difficult to forget the lessons of circle seven. The respect and honor that the pilgrim showed in those cantos to Brunetto Latini (Canto 15) because of his scholarly reputation and to the aristocratic warrior-sodomites Jacopo, Guido, and Tegghiaio (Canto 16) because of their martial exploits were in the end misplaced—these figures are, after all, damned. Remember, too, that Virgil is clearly not infallible—his misplaced trust of Malacoda in Canto 21 is the most recent evidence of that. Virgil’s expressed admiration for the seducer Jason in Canto 18 should also be kept in mind: As a classical pagan Stoic Virgil admired the greatness of heart that allowed Jason to disdain the pains of Hell. This is precisely the kind of spirit he exhorts Dante to display when he urges him to rise and move on. As in Milton’s Lycidas, fame in the Inferno may be the “last infirmity of noble mind,” and Virgil here is urging what Dante may be learning to reject: Fame for its own sake means nothing. An act’s only value lies in whether it pleases God, not in how it affects one’s reputation with other people. A case in point is the presentation of Vanni Fucci in this canto. Like the earlier Brunetto, Fucci is concerned with what people think of him back

in Florence, and Fucci, apparently proud of his reputation as a man of violence as the “Beast,” is ashamed at having Dante catch him among the thieves, knowing that the poet will report it among the living. As with others in Hell, Fucci’s earthly reputation means more to him than his damnation. But in a true undercutting of that attitude, Dante makes it clear that Fucci’s reputation is that of an assassin and plunderer. Fame in itself is not worth having. Fucci’s prophecy, the fourth in the Inferno spoken by one of the shades, is the most complex so far. Spoken deliberately in order to make Dante suffer, it is clearly a negative prediction of the poet’s future. But the details of the prophecy, at least after the first two lines, are obscure. In lines 143–144, Fucci says that Pistoia will be emptied of Blacks, and that Florence will change its citizens. These points are clear enough. In May 1301 the White Guelphs of Pistoia, with the aid of their fellow Whites (then in control of Florence), were successful in expelling the Blacks, after which they destroyed the property and possessions of the exiles. But the Pistoian Blacks, having taken refuge in Florence, soon joined with the Blacks of that city. Later on All Saints’ Day, 1301, Pope Boniface’s ally CHARLES OF VALOIS entered the city of Florence, after vowing to remain neutral in the internecine struggle and to keep the peace in the city. Once in charge, however, Charles reneged on his promises and actively promoted the Black cause. In the unrest that followed, the exiled Black leader CORSO DONATI returned to Florence, where he helped the prisoners escape from jail. They joined him and his Black faction in rioting and pillaging White Guelph neighborhoods for some five days, while Charles did nothing to stop the violence. Over the next several months the Whites (including Dante) were banished from Florence. The rest of Fucci’s prophecy (ll. 145–150) is much murkier. Mars will send a bolt of lightning from Valdimagra that will battle with thick, obscuring clouds, creating a violent storm over the fields of Piceno. Most commentators believe that the bolt of lightning refers to the Black Guelph captain MOROELLO MALASPINA, who was from the region

Inferno of Valdimagra. In 1302 Malaspina led a force of Blacks against Pistoia. The clouds that envelop him presumably refer to a Pistoian army of Whites that surrounded Malaspina and his forces at Serravalle, near Piceno. In the ensuing battle Malaspina was able to overcome the Whites and rout them in a bitter and decisive defeat from which, as Fucci says, no White was to escape unscathed. As a White Guelph himself the pilgrim Dante cannot hear this news without feeling the grief that Fucci intends. The gesture with which Vanni Fucci opens Canto 25 is not unknown even today in Italy: The thumb is thrust through the first and second fingers of a closed fist in a coarse approximation of sexual penetration, the implied meaning being a fairly obvious “fuck you!” To brandish a pair of these “figs” in the face of God is a shockingly blasphemous gesture, but it graphically illustrates one of the points that Dante makes continuously in his portraits of the damned: As Capaneus had said in Canto 14, what these shades were in life, they are still in death. Hell is populated with unrepentant sinners, whose perpetual actions in each round reiterate their sins in life. Fucci’s actions put into sharp relief Dante’s occasional sympathy for the damned souls. The damned in Hell deserve no pity—if they did, God would have pitied them. To grieve over their punishments now would be to question God’s wisdom and justice. Their damnation is self-willed. The obscene gesture also introduces the motif of sexual imagery that will pervade this canto. It foreshadows the reptilian attacks on the bodies of the thieves around which the action of the canto revolves: In the first attack, on Agnello by the sixfooted serpent, the viper clings to Agnello, biting him on both cheeks and spreading his thighs with its hind feet, thrusting its tail between Agnello’s legs. The two then literally become one. The imagery is that of rape, of sexual violation; the mood that of psychological nightmare. In part this contributes to the horror of the scene. In his edition of the poem Robert Pinsky has noted that the romantic creation of the horror genre (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for example) involves physical transformation of the body with erotic and moral overtones—as in the intimate bite of the vampire.

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Dante creates that kind of mood in this canto and so anticipates the genre. But more than that the sexual imagery here underscores the nature of the sin and the contrapasso in its punishment. Certainly the divine retribution in this scene is clear: The sin of the thieves was in taking what belonged to others, in a refusal to recognize the rights of others to retain what belonged to them. In Hell the thieves can call nothing at all their own, even their own bodies. They are constantly in danger of having their human form stolen from them and must perpetually repeat their sins by stealing back a body that is no longer theirs. But more than this Dante presents theft itself as a kind of violation. A human being’s right to privacy includes all that is private and intimate to that person. The presentation of theft as sexual abuse aptly portrays the violated feeling of the thief’s victim. The canto’s “five noble Florentine sinners,” as they are sometimes called (noble in the sense of aristocratic), have been identified with some consensus: Two of the sinners who first greet the poets are the former Ghibellines Puccio Sciancato (“the lame”) and Agnello Brunelleschi; the third, Buoso, may be either Buoso degli Abati or more probably Buoso Donati (infamous for his dishonesty in public office). The six-footed serpent who attacks Agnello is Cianfa de’ Donati, like Buoso a member of the Donati family that was to dominate the Florentine Black Guelph party. The fifth thief, the small serpent that bites Buoso, is Francesco dei Cavalcanti, a kinsman of Dante’s friend Guido and an associate of Buoso Donati. All five were older contemporaries of Dante, active (and notorious) in the late 13th century. Before Dante describes these bizarre metamorphoses, the pilgrim makes a gesture of his own, putting his finger to his lips (ll. 44–45) to prevent Virgil from speaking while the two of them observe the bestial attacks that fill the remainder of the canto. Dante’s gesture has attracted far less attention than Fucci’s, but it can be no coincidence that such a sign occurs here, soon after Fucci’s more memorable one. It would seem that the poet wants to associate his pilgrim persona with the vile thief. But why?

80 Inferno In addition to the vivid, surreal descriptions themselves much of the rest of the Canto consists of Dante’s boasts that he is outdoing his predecessors in the genre of narrative poetry. Let Ovid and Lucan be silent, Dante says (ll. 93, 97), for their accounts of the transformations of Cadmus and Arethusa (in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 4.576, 5.572), of Nasidius and Sabellus (in Lucan’s Pharsalia 9.763, 790) must pale in comparison to Dante’s own narration in this canto. Since he has already silenced Virgil with his earlier gesture, Dante is metaphorically silencing all the great narrative poets who preceded him to claim his own ascendancy in the genre. In fact the poet Dante knows that he could not here present this imaginative account of these metamorphoses without the prior examples of Virgil, Lucan, and particularly Ovid. In a sense he has stolen their technique, as in some ways all poets are thieves, building on the examples of the previous poets that inspire them. Further in seeking to displace those poets by outdoing them at their own game, Dante the narrator is performing another kind of theft—a theft of their reputations. Thus the character of Dante does, in fact, reflect the thief Vanni Fucci. As in other circles of Hell Dante once again participates in the sin of those he observes. Many readers have taken Dante’s boasting in this canto at face value (as they do Dante’s placing himself among the great classical poets in Limbo in Canto 4). Certainly Dante has never been accused of modesty. However, the pilgrim is still deep in Hell at this point, and the ultimate purpose of this leg of his journey is the recognition of sin—allegorically the sin within himself. The context of his remarks here includes Virgil’s assertion to him when the poets first entered this bolgia at the beginning of Canto 24: that fame is the means by which human beings achieve immortal status. Here Dante claims that pagan immortality that Virgil held out to him as an ideal. But that fame, Dante implies, is at least in part the product of the sin of theft. And he is, after all—with Ovid and Lucan and Virgil himself—still in Hell. Dante’s diatribe against his native city at the beginning of Canto 26 is apparently motivated by the five noble thieves of Florence who populate

the bolgia of thieves in Canto 25; however, it may be inspired as well by the evil counselors who inhabit the eighth bolgia, which he is now entering, for, Dante would certainly have argued, it was purely by the evil counsel of those who conspired against him that he was unjustly banished from Florence. The reference in this invective to “Prato” has been the object of some critical debate, with some scholars suggesting that it refers to the small town of Prato near Florence. In 1309 the town took part in a rebellion against the Florentine Black Guelphs, a possible reason for them to wish for Florence’s downfall, as Dante suggests in lines 7–9. But Dante is much more probably referring to Cardinal Niccolò da Prato. In 1304 Cardinal Prato was sent as papal legate to Florence by Benedict XI, successor of Dante’s great enemy Boniface VIII. The cardinal’s assignment was to seek reconciliation between the Whites and Blacks, but when he could make no progress with either side, the frustrated Prato placed the city under interdict (that is, he forbade priests to perform any sacraments in the city). Shortly after the pronouncement of this ecclesiastical curse, a bridge collapsed in Florence, and this was soon followed by a great fire in the city. Both disasters claimed many lives, and some citizens were quick to attribute the catastrophes to the cardinal’s curse. The sinners of Canto 26 are generally designated “evil counselors”—their sins are related to the misuse of their intellectual gifts for purposes of deceit, trickery, and the attainment of questionable goals. Thus Ulysses is here chiefly for the stratagem of the wooden horse that brought about the destruction of Troy—the city that Dante would have seen as the cradle of Roman, and hence Italian, civilization. Because the devices of the evil counselors were hatched under the cover of secrecy, their souls are hidden in flames. And because their sins involved their smooth, persuasive speech, the flames that engulf them wave like so many glib tongues. One of the curious details of this canto is Virgil’s proposal that he, rather than Dante, be the one to approach the Greek warriors Diomedes and Ulysses. Clearly Dante spoke no Greek, and it is probably true that the two classical heroes would

Inferno have thought Dante’s Tuscan dialect a barbarous tongue. Virgil himself, as did most educated Romans of his day, almost certainly spoke Greek, but there is nothing in the text that suggests Virgil speaks to the two heroes in Greek, and the poet clearly understands Ulysses’ response to Virgil’s question, so it must be spoken in a language Dante recognizes. As he has in prior encounters with classical heroes, like that with Jason in the first bolgia (Canto 18), Virgil approaches Diomedes and Ulysses with great respect, speaking to them as an epic poet who helped spread their renown in his verse. The most attractive explanation for Virgil’s position in this situation is that he performs here the same function his poetry served in life: Since Dante, and medieval Christians in general, were unfamiliar with Greek, it was through the classical Roman writers that Dante and his contemporaries were able to hear of the classical heroes. Thus Virgil, figuratively and literally, serves as intermediary between Dante and Homer. Ulysses’ speech, one of the best known of the entire Comedy, is also one of the most misunderstood. From our modern point of view Ulysses’ voyage seems heroic, his individualism admirable, and his desire to gain all virtue and knowledge in life evidence that he anticipates the Renaissance man, who takes all knowledge as his province. This is the Ulysses of Tennyson’s great poem. Modern readers will tend to see a prescient Dante as creating a hero who is a century ahead of his time: He may be in Hell for his evil counsel, but this story has nothing to do with that sin. But once again Dante leads the reader into being charmed by the sinner without recognizing the sin. Like Virgil, we are drawn to admire heroic action for its own sake, and we forget to apply the Christian ethic that is the backbone of the Comedy. It is Ulysses’ tongue that has counseled evil before, and it is his tongue that wins over the crew in his story—and his readers ever since—but it wins them to what even Ulysses himself calls “madness.” Ulysses persuades his men to sail to their deaths by transcending the bounds set for human beings by the gods—an act that even in Ulysses’ own day would be considered hubris, the kind of overweening pride by which one puts oneself above the gods.

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Thus his speech itself is an example of his evil counsel. Consider, too, that Ulysses’ speech in this canto is modeled directly on Aeneas’s speech to his troops in Virgil’s poem (which, ironically, is modeled on Ulysses’ exhortation to his own men in the Odyssey). Unlike Virgil’s pious Aeneas, who follows the will of the gods at all times, sublimating his own desires to the divine will, Ulysses follows only his own reckless schemes. And where Ulysses says that neither the desire to be with his wife, Penelope; nor his son, Telemachus; nor his aged father, Laertes, was enough to dissuade him from acting on his desire to know all the world, Aeneas’s concern is always for his father, Anchises; his son, Ascanius; and his wife, Creusa. Despite his admiration for Ulysses in Dante’s text, the real Virgil had quite a different view of heroism than that of Dante’s Ulysses. Ulysses’ intellectual pride should remind the reader of something else, though: Dante’s own boasting in the previous canto. We have not yet finished with the implications of Virgil’s lecture on immortality through fame with which he opened Canto 25. Ulysses is the most famous character who speaks in the Inferno. He is the classical hero whose fame has lasted for thousands of years. Known for his own silver-tongued rhetoric, he has survived through the words of poets like Virgil and Dante. Yet he is in Hell, damned for eternity. Fame for its own sake, unconnected to a higher cause, is ultimately valueless. Here is the clearest of all answers to Dante’s desire to surpass Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso), Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus), and Virgil—to his own hubris. That road, like Ulysses’ voyage, is merely another route to Hell. If there are any lingering doubts about the nature of Ulysses’ fame and heroic stature, the immediate introduction of Guido da Montefeltro as his fellow sinner in bolgia eight should be enough to erase them. There is a dramatic shift from highflown epic rhetoric to Italian vernacular as Guido seeks information about his own Romagna from one whose Lombard accent he recognizes. Virgil is dismissive, even rude to Guido (in contrast to his almost obsequious approach to Ulysses), and tells Dante to speak with him, since Guido is Italian.

82 Inferno But the juxtaposition of Guido and Ulysses undercuts the pretensions of the Greek hero and shows Virgil’s admiration of him to be misplaced. For Guido is by no stretch of the imagination a heroic figure. Like many of the Italians in Hell, Guido is still passionately patriotic. But far from seeing this attitude as a virtue, Dante presents it as misguided: They are in death what they were in life, and their values are still misplaced. Ironically Guido claims in his confession to the pilgrim that he withdrew from his active political life, repenting of his past sins, to devote himself to God through the life of a Franciscan. Yet his very first words to the poets display his unabated interest in the politics of Romagna. Clearly his retreat from the world was nothing more than a pose. The fact that Boniface was apparently able to persuade Guido to forget his vows and take up his old ways as well implies that Guido’s repentance was equally insincere. For Guido, as for Ulysses, the power to deceive through cunning words is irresistible, and the fact that Guido says that his plan (of adopting the friar’s robe) would have worked (line 69) if Boniface had not interfered suggests that his retirement from military life was, for Guido, not true repentance but simply a strategy to deceive God into saving him despite his former sins. It is even possible, Mark Musa has suggested in his edition of the poem (369), that Guido may be lying about the entire encounter with the pope. It is unclear where Dante found the story—there is an independent Ferrarese chronicle written before 1313 that records the pope’s encounter with Guido, but it is possible that that account was based on Dante’s story. Although Guido tells Dante that he will only answer him because he knows no one can return to the earth from this pit of Hell, and so he believes his reputation is safe, he may suspect that Dante is telling the truth when he says he can spread Guido’s fame in the world. Guido’s main concern in his story is to excuse himself and to throw the blame on someone else—Boniface VIII—for his own damnation. There is, of course, no way for Dante or any of his readers to know what really happened between Guido and Boniface, and therefore Guido could easily be slanting the story to make himself appear innocent.

The story of Saint Francis and the black cherub is, of course, also a Dantean invention. According to this account Guido’s damnation is established through logic: Under normal circumstances Boniface’s absolution should have been enough to save Guido. The appropriate rites were followed. Even if, as Dante contended, Boniface was a sinful priest, the sacrament itself was nevertheless salvific. But the cherub—a fallen member of the second order of angels, who, according to medieval supposition, were the most learned—applies the Aristotelian logic of contradictions to the situation: One cannot repent of a sin at the same time one’s will is determined to commit it; therefore, Boniface’s prior absolution is invalid. Divine justice, Dante implies, must conform to rational precepts. It should be noted that this particular anecdote anticipates a similar incident in Canto 5 of the Purgatorio, involving Guido’s own son, BUONCONTE DA MONTEFELTRO. There is a similar contest over the soul of the late-repentant Buonconte, but this one is ultimately resolved in favor of salvation. The parallel incidents vividly illustrate the difference between true and false repentance. One final aspect of this canto that has excited some critical commentary is the striking resemblance of Guido’s political philosophy to that of the influential Renaissance philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli. Aside from a general similarity in their pragmatic attitudes, Guido’s metaphor of the politician as the lion or the fox anticipates Machiavelli’s use of the same terms in Book 18 of The Prince. The image ultimately is taken from MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO’s De officiis (1.13.41), where he says that one may do injury through force (like a lion) or through deceit (like a fox), but deceit is more contemptible. But whereas Cicero and Dante see these kinds of acts as despicable, Machiavelli asserts that they are indispensable for the successful prince. As in the case of Ulysses Dante’s judgment of this kind of behavior—and his consignment of it to Hell—is at odds with the prevailing attitudes that would emerge later, in the Renaissance. Canto 28 opens with Dante’s employing what is known in medieval literature as the “inexpressibility topos”—a conventionally humble expression of the writer’s inability to put into words what he is about

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The Schismatics and Sowers of Discord: Mohammed and Ali, from Canto 28 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

to attempt to describe. Dante will use this device more and more in the Paradiso, where the impossibility of expressing the divine in human words becomes a progressively difficult problem. Here the poet faces the opposite difficulty: The horrors of this particular bolgia are beyond human expression. Dante begins in a high epic style, invoking the great battles of the Romans and Samnites, or of the Punic Wars, with which to compare the carnage that he sees here. He then lapses into a colloquial, even vulgar style to depict the wounds of Muhammad, slit from the chin to the “place where we fart” (28, l. 24), and dragging between his legs the sack in which our food turns “to shit” (28, ll. 26–27). Battle wounds are not glorious for Dante; nor, for that matter, are the consequences of sin, which these mutilations are.

This canto is unusual in its steady march of sinners on and off stage, with little commentary or reflection by Virgil or by Dante. Still the sinners do not appear randomly but seem to follow a certain order: religious schismatics (Muhammad and Ali), followed by political schismatics (Curio and Mosca de’ Lamberti), and finally one who sowed discord not only on a political level but within the family of King Henry II—Bertran de Born. The purpose of the canto seems chiefly to illustrate most vividly the Dantean concept of contrapasso, embodied so perfectly in Bertran, whose appearance is the culmination of the canto and who is the only person in the Inferno actually to use the term contrapasso. He uses it to describe his punishment—he severed son from father, and so for eternity his head is severed from his body in symbolic retribution. Readers ever

84 Inferno since have applied the term to all of the punishments throughout the Inferno. The word itself is derived from the medieval Latin translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where the philosopher uses the term contrapassum to indicate a kind of retributive justice. Thomas Aquinas commented on Aristotle’s term and applied it to a discussion of the Old Testament principle of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” (Exodus 21.24). Other Scholastic philosophers adopted the term, and so Dante saw it as appropriate for his own conception of infernal retributive justice. Like Bertran de Born, all of the sinners in Hell are punished in a way that suits their particular sin, either symbolically or literally, a way that may even take the form of a reenactment of the sin itself. There are implications beyond this, of course, as I have mentioned previously: The contrapasso is the sinners’ own self-willed punishment, and they reenact their sins because they are the same people in Hell as they were on earth. One puzzling aspect of this Canto is the way so many shades crowd toward Dante when they hear that he is alive. Nowhere else in the Inferno do so many sinners go forward, all eager to be remembered and to have Dante relay messages to people in the world. Nowhere else are the sinners so keen to claim some kind of existence or connection with people outside Hell. Such behavior is particularly curious this deep in Hell, since so many sinners lying above these schismatics were reluctant to have their names known. One is forced to conclude that there must be something about this particular sin that prompts such behavior. Perhaps their need to meddle in earthly affairs—a need that ultimately damned them as they instigated friction and dissension in those affairs—still burns in them now: Like the other sinners, they are the same now as they were on earth. The most ironic aspect of their interest, however, is that it can never be satisfied. In life the sinners separated what God intended should remain intact—the church, the state, the family. The final act of separation resulting from these sinners’ actions was their own damnation, which severs them from all normal human contact eternally. Thus the sowers of discord are responsible for the very schism they are trying to bridge by speaking with Dante.

It is curious that some commentators have explained or even justified Dante’s interest in his kinsman Geri del Bello in the opening of Canto 29 by remarking that vengeance for the death of a family member—the private vendetta—was traditional and even sanctioned by Florentine law in Dante’s time. Indeed it was even believed to be sanctioned in Scripture: Numbers 35.19 reads, “The avenger of blood is the one who shall put the murderer to death; when they meet, the avenger of blood shall execute the sentence” (NRSV). Should the pilgrim Dante not have learned something by now about vengeance, having just met the figure of Mosca de’ Lamberti, whose insistence on a blood vendetta tore apart his native city for generations? Certainly the poet Dante must intend readers to see the irony of his character’s feelings of guilt at this point and recognize that family honor may be just another excuse for sowing discord, as Dante’s kinsman is doing here, even from Hell. There is a natural transition from the mutilated bodies of the schismatics into the diseased forms of the falsifiers, suggesting the interrelatedness of the sins of fraud punished in Malebolge. In a scheme that will not become apparent until Dante completes his exploration of bolgia 10 in the next canto, the falsifiers are subdivided into four different groups of sinners, each of which is afflicted with its own particular disease. The alchemists, whom the poets meet in Canto 29, are covered with leprous scabs. At one point Virgil compares these scabs to rings of chain mail (l. 85), perhaps a fitting affliction for those who falsified metals. Alchemy itself (condemned in 1317 by a papal bull of POPE JOHN XXII) specifically attempts to transform base metals into replications or imitations of precious ones like silver and gold. Although some serious philosophers—Roger Bacon or ALBERTUS MAGNUS, for example—were deeply interested in the science of alchemy, there were also a number of charlatans (like the canon described in Chaucer’s “Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale”) whose sole purpose was to deceive others for their own gain. Their inclusion in the Hell of the fraudulent and the falsifiers is therefore appropriate. The precise nature of the contrapasso in this bolgia is not immediately apparent. In one sense their

Inferno sickness suggests a kind of inner infection, a moral corruption from within that erupts into disgusting physical ailments. But the sin of the falsifiers has mainly to do with deception—they deceive the eyes, the ears, or the other senses of their victims, thereby creating a false impression. Thus in their bolgia all of their own senses are afflicted—the darkness distresses their sight, the painful cries their hearing, the stench their sense of smell. Most of all the diseases afflict their sense of touch, so that ultimately the only world they know is one that they cannot properly perceive because of the assault on their five senses. In his translation of the poem John Ciardi comments that the conditions in bolgia 10 reflect what society would become if all falsifiers were successful—a place where none of our senses could be trusted to give us truth or comfort (242). A remarkable detail of Canto 29 is the way in which Dante joins the sinners Griffolino da Arezzo and Capocchio in a series of comic insults directed at the citizens of Siena. As with Dante’s earlier interest in avenging Geri del Bello, commentators have generally accepted the pilgrim’s remarks at face value, explaining that Siena and Florence were rivals, and that their citizens would often poke fun at one another. But surely there is more to this canto than Dante’s engaging in a little lighthearted fun at the expense of the Sienese while exploring the depths of Hell. Mark Musa points out that Capocchio’s ironic comments—pretending to praise three of the most foolish of all the Sienese as a way of condemning them—do with language precisely what he has done with metals: falsify it by using language not for clear communication but only for the comic effects of satire (II, 392). Thus the pilgrim Dante, in joining in the derision, participates in the sin of falsification, just as earlier in the canto he had participated in the schismatic Geri’s sin. It is worth commenting on some of the physical details mentioned by Virgil in Canto 29. First he tells Dante that the ninth bolgia is 22 miles around (Canto 29, l. 9), and we learn in the next canto that the bolgia they are entering, bolgia 10, is half that distance (Canto 30, l. 86). This clarifies the shape of Hell as Dante conceives it: It is a giant

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cone that becomes progressively narrower as the pilgrims move toward the bottom, at the center of the earth. In addition Virgil—with the uncanny ability to read the stars from underground—mentions that there is not time for Dante to keep watching the sinners of bolgia nine because the moon is already directly under their feet. This suggests that the sun must be directly above their heads, and that it is now noon on Holy Saturday. Since their journey began at sundown on Good Friday, the poets have now been traveling some 18 hours. The falsifiers of Canto 30 represent a more significant threat to society than the alchemists of Canto 29, for these sinners have falsified identity, money, and words. Any society must agree on what these three things mean if it is to function at all. Each group of falsifiers is stricken with a different malady as punishment—a situation that implies a different specific contrapasso for each type of sinner. The falsifiers of identity run mad like animals, snatching and dragging away the forms of other sinners in the bolgia. In life these sinners disguised their own individuality, taking on the nature of another. So in death they have lost their minds— that faculty that gave them their sense of self—and reenact their sins by spending eternity stealing the shades of other personalities. Master Adam, the falsifier of currency, is bloated and deformed by dropsy. That deformity is a visual image of distortion that mirrors the counterfeiter’s sin: As Master Adam improperly mixed three ounces of alloy with the pure gold of the florin (l. 90), so (according to medieval science) his disease is caused by an improper mixture of bodily humors. As for the false witnesses the kind of burning fever they display would cause delirium in a living body, and hence false words, while their foul stench may symbolize the inner corruption caused by lies. The most striking incident in this canto is probably Virgil’s sharp reprimand of the pilgrim—his second in as many cantos—for taking excessive interest in the sinners of this bolgia. Why should Virgil be so angry, and why should Dante the pilgrim be so fascinated by the low-comic verbal wrangling of Sinon and Master Adam? Virgil has changed from the early cantos, where he used more gentle means to guide the pilgrim’s reactions,

86 Inferno even when they involved sympathy for the sinners. This deep in Hell, as the poets are about to enter the last circle, he expects more from Dante. By now the pilgrim should have learned that his purpose for the journey is not mere entertainment— Dante’s responses to the sinners he meets should include reasoned moral judgment in the recognition of the sin, not engagement with the sinners on their own level. But Dante’s interest in these sinners’ exchange may be more complex than Virgil implies. As scholars have pointed out, the insulting argument of Sinon and Master Adam bears a striking resemblance to the medieval lyric debate genre called the tenzone. In the tenzone two poets engaged in a debate, exchanging verses in which they often abused each other. Each poet would take a line or image from the other poet’s latest verse and use it to construct a new poem insulting the other poet. Dante himself had engaged in this sort of poetic contest early in his career with fellow poets like CECCO ANGIOLIERI and Forese Donati. In the tenzone between Sinon and Master Adam each speaker insults the other in a single tercet, and each poet picks out an image from the previous tercet to throw back at the other speaker. Thus when Adam strikes Sinon, he says that even though he cannot move, his arm is free to strike (ll. 106–108). Sinon answers that Adam’s arm was not so free when it was tied behind him at the stake when he was burned for his crimes (ll. 109–111). At that Adam says Sinon is speaking the truth but was not so truthful when he gave testimony at Troy (ll. 112–114). And so on. For Dante this passage is not merely the depiction of a pair of sinners arguing; it is the rejection of a form of poetry. Sinon and Master Adam are falsifiers of words—something that no poet should ever be. Yet here they engage in a poetic discussion that uses the form of poetry in a false way—merely to insult (and entertain), not to edify or enlighten. The young Dante, represented by the pilgrim, engaged in such trivialities. The mature Dante, the poet behind the Inferno, has a more vital purpose for his talent and expresses his disapproval through the mouth of Virgil. One final aspect of Canto 30 deals more closely with Dante’s language. For English students read-

ing the Comedy in translation, it is difficult to see beyond the power of Dante’s narrative to his skill as a poet. But that skill is apparent in this canto even in translation through his adept use of water imagery. As a number of commentators have pointed out, Master Adam’s great thirst, despite the superfluity of water he retains through his dropsy, causes him to imagine beautiful streams familiar to him from his youth—but this water cannot satisfy him. His hatred of the Guidi brothers is so intense, however, that he says he would trade Branda’s fountain (apparently a well-known fountain in Siena) for a sight of one of them suffering in Hell—a wish that likewise will never be satisfied. In his invective against Sinon Adam says that the liar’s fever would cause him to drink dry the mirror of Narcissus—a deep pond that reflected a false image that caused Narcissus to pine away with self-love. Adam’s references point to unsatisfying or frustrating experiences with water. But the canto ends with another water image: When Virgil sees Dante’s true repentance for his error, he tells him that his shame has washed away his guilt (l. 142). Perhaps there is an allusion to the beatitudes (Matthew 5.6), where those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are satisfied—Adam’s thirst has never been for righteousness, but the pilgrim’s true repentance is indeed a desire for that virtue. Perhaps, too, there is a suggestion of baptism: It is baptism that washes away sin, and contrition and absolution renew the effects of that cleansing baptism. Note, too, the allegory in the closing lines of this canto: Virgil tells Dante that whenever he feels the urge to take part in this kind of verbal abuse, he should remember that Virgil is always at his side. Since clearly Virgil will be at Dante’s side only through the next canticle of the Comedy, there must be something beyond the literal sense to these words. The implication seems to be that Virgil, as the symbol of human reason, is always with Dante, and that Dante should exercise his powers of reason before engaging in this sort of vulgar wrangling. Since at this point we are nearing the end of the Inferno, this may in fact be Dante’s farewell to the kinds of political attacks he has been making on his personal enemies, men like Boniface VIII. Dante seems here to free himself to transcend per-

Inferno    87 sonal and party interests as he prepares to enter the realms of the saved. Canto 31 is a transitional chapter, moving the poets from the wide circle of Malebolge into the ninth and last circle of Hell, Cocytus, where complex fraud is punished. The pit guarded by the giants is parallel to the great cliff and waterfall that separated the violent of circle seven from the fraudulent of circle eight. Similarly it parallels the walls of the city of Dis, which separated Lower Hell from the incontinent sinners of Upper Hell. Indeed Dante’s mistaking the looming giants for the towers of a city recalls the city of Dis and the fallen angels that man its walls in Canto 7. But the similarities do more than mark the transition in the plot. Both the fallen angels and the giants who guard the ninth circle were guilty of rebellion against their gods—the angels in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the giants in pagan classical myth. The pride and envy that lay behind both rebellions are in fact the chief motives behind all the sins punished in these lower circles. The worst sinners of all are those punished in the ninth circle. These are the shades of those whose fraudulent behavior was coupled with treachery against those to whom they had special ties—their families, their countries, their lords. Rebellion against God, the true and absolute lord, must be the worst of all these sins, and the poets will find the giant form of Lucifer himself, prefigured by these giants that guard this well, frozen in the ice in the center of Cocytus. The giants’ pride and envy, and their treacherous rebellion against their gods, make it fitting that they be assigned to this final pit. Dante even makes the comment, in lines 49–57, that nature did well to cease producing such giants. Whales and elephants are not so threatening, since they do not possess reason, but the coupling of intellect with brute force and evil will is a combination that is beyond human power to defeat. In his edition of the poem Mark Musa applies these three attributes to the sinners of Lower Hell: The sins of circles one through five are sins of weakness and appetite, whereas the sins of Lower Hell require an “evil will.” The violent commit sin through brute force joined with evil will, and the fraudulent of Male-

bolge sin through intellect combined with evil will. But the sinners of the ninth circle, like the giants who guard it, sin through evil will and brute force allied with intellect (2, 409). Thus the sinners in Cocytus are the worst of the sinners in Hell. It may not at first be clear why Nimrod is included among the giants here. Although medieval tradition made him a giant, he clearly did not take part in the rebellion of Titans against Jove. As the traditional builder of the Tower of Babel, however, Nimrod was guilty of pride and of rebellion against God. As for Antaeas, who took no part in the rebellion of his fellow Titans, he seems to have had the same prideful tendencies as his brother giants: He boasted, for example, that he could build a temple to his father, Neptune, out of the skulls of the enemies he had killed. It is through an appeal to his vanity—the promise that Dante can spread

Antaeus—Descent to the last Circle, from Canto 31 of the Inferno, by Gustave Doré. From Dante’s Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.

88    Inferno his fame on earth—that Virgil persuades him to help the poets. Still it seems clear that Antaeas is here not for any particular sin but as a guard with his fellow giants, whose nature—combining brute force with evil will and reason—symbolizes the sin of the final circle.

Compound Fraud (the Leopard) (Cantos 31–34) Synopsis As the pilgrims are about to enter the final circle of Hell, Dante the poet expresses doubts about his ability to find words harsh enough to express the true nature of that terrible pit, and he asks for help from the Muses to compose his verse. As Dante and Virgil are about to turn from the feet of the giant and enter the darkness, the poet hears a voice tell him to take care not to kick the heads below his feet. When Dante turns to look, he sees that the ninth circle, Cocytus, is a vast lake of solid ice, out of which protrude the heads of sinners whose faces, purple with the cold, are bent toward the ice in sorrow. These are the worst sinners in the universe—the treacherous ones, guilty of compound fraud with violence against others to whom they had special ties. In the first round, Caïna (named for Cain, the world’s first murderer of a kinsman), the poet’s attention is first drawn to a pair of sinners buried chest to chest in the ice, their tears running down and freezing between their faces, their heads butting together in fury. Another figure, his ears frozen off from the cold, calls out and identifies the pair for Dante: They are Napoleone and Alessandro, sons of Count Alberto of Mangona, who killed each other over their inheritance. The speaker points out other inhabitants of this round, including King Arthur’s treacherous son, Mordred; the Pistoian White Guelph Focaccia, who killed his Black Guelph cousin Detto de’ Cancellieri; and Sassol Mascheroni, a Florentine who killed his nephew over an inheritance. Finally the speaker identifies himself as Camicion de’ Pazzi, who murdered his relative Ubertino. The poets move on, farther toward the center of Cocytus and the bottom of Hell. Now they are in Antenora (named after Antenor, betrayer of his

native city of Troy), where the sinners are buried even deeper in the ice, so that they cannot move their heads at all and must stare perpetually down at the frozen lake. As the poets step through the heads, Dante’s foot kicks one, who cries out, asking whether Dante has come to take revenge on him for Montaperti (the great battle of 1260 in which the Florentine Guelphs were defeated by the Ghibellines). Dante asks Virgil to stop momentarily so that he can question this sinner. They halt, and Dante asks the sinner who he is. The shade responds by asking who Dante is, saying that he kicks as hard as a living man. To this Dante responds that he is in fact a living man, and he offers to make the shade’s name known to the world, if he desires fame. But that is the last thing this sinner wants, and he refuses to speak. Now the poet grabs the sinner by the back of the head and threatens to pull out all his hair if he does not reveal his identity. Still the shade refuses. One of the other sinners then asks why he is shouting so, identifying him by name: This is Bocca degli Abati, who betrayed the Guelphs at Montaperti by cutting off the hand of their standard bearer, leading to their confusion and defeat. Dante now expresses his disgust with Bocca, saying he will reveal everything to the world. Bocca tells the poet to leave and say whatever he wants, but in revenge reveals the name of the sinner who betrayed him: It is Buoso da Duera, who took a bribe to betray Manfred to Charles of Anjou. Farther ahead, Bocca continues, are the traitors Tesauro dei Beccheria, a Florentine abbot who sent covert messages to Ghibellines after their exile from the city; Gianni Soldanier, who deserted his own party to join the Florentine Guelphs; and Ganelon, the knight who betrayed Roland and Charlemagne’s rear guard to the Saracens. Farther on the pilgrims come across a more gruesome sight. Two heads are frozen in the same hole, and one of the heads is gnawing furiously on the other. The poet asks the angry shade for his story, vowing that if the shade’s vengeance is justified, he will tell his story to the living world. As Canto 33 opens, the sinner whom Dante addressed pauses in his grisly meal, wipes his lips on the hair of his victim, and responds to the

Inferno poet’s request: Telling his own story causes him great pain, he says, but if he can help to spread his victim’s infamy in the world, he is willing to relate the tale. He identifies himself as Count Ugolino and his victim as Archbishop RUGGIERI DEGLI UBALDINI DELLA PILA and goes on to tell what is perhaps the most famous story in the Inferno. Ruggieri had imprisoned Ugolino in a tower in Pisa, where the latter died. This is well known, Ugolino tells Dante, but the details of his death are not. Ugolino tells of a dream he had after several months in the tower, of a wolf and cubs torn to pieces in a hunt led by Ruggieri. Ugolino awoke from the dream to find his children, imprisoned there with him, asking for bread as he heard the sound of nails from below, sealing the tower door. Threatened with starvation, Ugolino chewed on his own hands in frustration and despair. But his children, thinking that he chewed his hands from hunger, offered him their own flesh to eat. Four days passed without food, before Ugolino’s son, Gaddo, died of starvation. After two more days all of his children had died, and Ugolino, blind from hunger, crawled over their bodies calling their names. He ends his story ambiguously, saying that “hunger proved more powerful than grief” (Canto 33, l. 75). Many have interpreted this to mean that Ugolino ate his own children’s flesh to prolong his life, though it may only mean that he finally succumbed to starvation. When he has finished his gruesome story, the shade returns with renewed vigor to his vicious devouring of Ruggieri’s skull. Dante takes this opportunity to address an apostrophe to the city of Pisa, chastising the citizens for allowing the innocent deaths of Ugolino’s four sons. Now the poets move to a new round, where the sinners are frozen with only half of their faces above the ice, pointing upward so that their tears freeze shut their eyes. This is Ptolomea (named for Ptolomaeus from the book of Maccabees, who killed his father-in-law at a banquet). Here are punished those who violently betrayed guests or hosts. As the poets walk against a bitterly cold wind, Dante asks Virgil where the wind blows from and is told only that he will see for himself soon enough. But hearing them, one of the sinners calls out and begs

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for one of the poets to break the ice from around the sinner’s eyes to enable his tears to flow, thereby allowing him a small release of anguish. The pilgrim promises to do so if the shade will reveal his name. Dante is surprised to find that this sinner is FRIAR (Fra) ALBERIGO, a Jovial Friar who murdered two of his kinsmen—Manfred and his son, Alberghetto—at a dinner to which he had invited them. This shocks Dante because Fra Alberigo was in fact still alive in the world at the time of the pilgrim’s journey. Alberigo reveals to Dante that souls guilty of this level of treachery will often fall directly into Ptolomea, their living bodies inhabited by demons in the physical world. Thus Alberigo identifies the sinner beside him as BRANCA D’ORIA of Genoa— murderer of his father-in-law, Michel Zanche, also at a banquet—even though Branca was not only still alive at the time of the Inferno’s compilation, but lived until 1325. Having told his story, Fra Alberigo asks Dante to fulfill his promise and free his frozen eyes, but the poet refuses, determining that cruelty to such a sinner was in fact virtue. Canto 33 ends with another apostrophe, this time to the city of Genoa, which produced sinners like Branca D’Oria. May their like be wiped from the earth, Dante urges. The final canto of the Inferno opens as Virgil quotes a Latin hymn, VEXILLA REGIS PRODEUNT (“Onward go the banners of the King”), but ironically adds the word Inferni (“of Hell”), for he and Dante are now approaching the “king” of Hell, Satan himself. Dante looks ahead to see what he believes at first to be a giant windmill, from which issues the cold wind that blows over the ice. They are passing now through the last round of circle nine, Judecca (named for JUDAS ISCARIOT), where lie those who betrayed their lords and benefactors. These sinners are completely submerged in the ice, and Dante sees them petrified in various positions in the frozen lake. Bereft of all warmth of love, these sinners have lost all human qualities and will exist eternally in this frozen state. Now Virgil stops Dante and tells him to look ahead. In this climactic moment of the Inferno the pilgrim sees that what he thought was a windmill is in fact the mammoth figure of Satan himself, frozen to his waist in the ice, making the wind with

90 Inferno the movement of his giant batlike wings. Looking on the hideous figure of pure evil, Dante notes that Satan has three faces, red, black, and yellow, and that tears mixed with blood run down each face. In each mouth Satan chews on a sinner: Judas, the betrayer of Christ, is stuffed headfirst into Satan’s central, red face. The black and yellow faces devour feet-first MARCUS JUNIUS BRUTUS and CASSIUS (GAIUS CASSIUS LONGINUS), the betrayers of Julius Caesar. Virgil now tells his ward that they have seen everything Hell has to offer, and it is time for them to leave, since night is beginning again in the world above. But their exit proves to be as strange as any vision the pilgrim has seen in Hell: With Dante clinging to his back, Virgil grabs onto the hairy side of Satan and begins to climb down his shaggy body through the ice. When they reach Satan’s thigh, they proceed to climb upward, and the confused Dante believes they are climbing back into Hell. But then Virgil shows him the devil’s two legs extending upward, and he explains that they have passed the center of gravity and are climbing out into the hemisphere opposite the one from which they entered Hell. Here, Virgil goes on, is the hemisphere of water, from which Mount Purgatory extends, on top of which is the earthly Paradise. Upon Satan’s fall from Heaven, which made the pit that was to become Hell, a great mass of land pushed up from the place where the fallen angel landed (in Dante’s geography, the spot precisely opposite Jerusalem on the other side of the globe), the earth itself pulling away to avoid the evil one, piling itself into a huge mountain. Thereby Satan’s fall created Mount Purgatory as well. The two poets climb upward through a cavern carved by a stream (probably the river Lethe) flowing from Purgatory into Hell and emerge at last through a small opening to see, for the first time since they entered the Inferno, the stars. They are at the foot of Mount Purgatory, and it is sunrise on Easter Sunday. Commentary Readers familiar chiefly with popular notions of Hell may be surprised at first to find that the lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno is not a blazing fire but

rather a frozen lake of ice. But it is important to consider the allegorical significance in the contrapasso for this particular sin. Dante is dealing here with compound fraud: The sinners are those who by fraudulent means treacherously and violently betrayed those to whom they were bound by special ties—those for whom they should have felt a particular sort of binding love. For Dante God is love, and the love of God holds all the universe in ordered harmony; as Virgil will explain at some length in Canto 17 of the Purgatorio, all human actions are also motivated by love. The sinners in circle nine have perverted God’s gift of love, which gives to all things warmth and life. Thus they are eternally without warmth, in a frozen lake where there is no love and therefore no life. Three particular points in Canto 32 are worth noting: First the Canto opens with Dante employing a conventional “humility topos,” whereby he expresses his own inability appropriately to convey the harshness of this nadir of the universe. The poet invokes the Muses for the second time in the poem (he had first addressed them at the beginning of Canto 2, as he began his journey through Hell). The effect here is essentially to make a new beginning. Rhetorically the new invocation sets off the ninth circle as a separate place, underscoring the special nature of its inhabitants, whose sins have placed them beneath all the other sinners of the universe. It should be noted that Dante’s language here, in the original Italian, becomes as sharp and grating as he says he wants it to be—a development generally not observable in a translation. Second the passage in lines 19–21, where an unidentified voice warns Dante not to step on the heads of the frozen sinners, has been a site of some critical controversy. Some scholars claim that the voice is simply an unidentified sinner’s warning rising from the ice at Dante’s feet. Others have identified the voice as that of Virgil. Still others have suggested that the voice is that of one or both of the brothers whom Dante will see butting heads with one another in lines 40–42. The first of these suggestions seems the least satisfying, since it relates to nothing else in the poem. Mark Musa argues for Virgil as the speaker, pointing out that if the sinners’ heads are all looking downward in this

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Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri, from Canto 32 of the Inferno, by Gustave Doré. From Dante’s Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.

round, they cannot have noticed the poets’ arrival (2.420). Singleton, however, thinks the speaker is probably one of the brothers, the earlier passage having created a suspense relieved by the pilgrim’s finally noticing the quarreling brothers 20 lines later (Inferno 2.584). This last argument seems more likely, since there seems to be no point in the narrator’s failure to identify Virgil as the speaker. Perhaps the most important aspect of Canto 32 concerns Dante’s altered relationship with the sinners he encounters. In the first place the pilgrim still seems to believe that the possibility of earthly fame may be an incentive for these sinners to reveal their stories to him. Thus he first approaches Bocca degli

Abati with the offer of immortalizing his name. The poet quickly finds that here the sinners seek only to avoid such immortality. As the cold represents their denial of life, so they also eschew the possibility of their names’ living after them. But after the pilgrim’s open sympathy for many of the sinners up to this point, readers may find his behavior toward Bocca somewhat disturbing: Though he had verbally abused Pope Nicholas in Canto 19, this is the first time Dante has actually contributed to the physical punishment of a sinner, and we may be taken aback by the vehemence of his cruelty as he yanks Bocca’s hair, threatening to pull it all out. Of course it may simply be that

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Dante is finally feeling the kind of righteous anger that Virgil has instructed him to feel throughout the poem. But that hardly explains the vicious cruelty of the attack. Possibly this is the Guelph Dante expressing his anger at the betrayal of his party and the loss of his city at Montaperti. But this kind of fanatical political squabbling is something Dante has been learning to leave behind throughout the Inferno—it would seem inappropriate for him to engage in it here. I would argue that the only satisfying explanation for Dante’s behavior here lies in the allegorical nature of these events. On the moral level Dante as Everyman must recognize the nature of sin and must recognize the sin within himself before he can begin the purgation of sin on the road to salvation. Thus the journey through Hell is the exploration of sin in his own psyche. The sinners of the ninth circle are those without human love; thus Dante’s treatment of them displays no human love. The pilgrim’s behavior enacts the sin, forcing his recognition of it in himself—perhaps particularly in relation to his political enemies. At the same time the sinners of this round are individuals on the literal level but allegorically represent the sins themselves. Thus Dante’s expression of hatred is not personal cruelty but is allegorically an expression of a sincere hatred of the sin of treachery. In this no doubt Dante expects his readers to concur. Ugolino’s pathetic tale of his imprisonment and death that forms the first half of Canto 33 is the longest single speech in the Inferno (72 lines). In many ways this moving and dramatic tale at the end of Dante’s journey through Hell parallels that of Francesca da Rimini in Canto 5, at the beginning of the pilgrim’s trek. In both cases Dante confronts a pair of sinners—Francesca with Paolo, Ugolino with Ruggieri—of whom only one speaks. In both cases the speaker weaves a compelling and emotional narrative, and both speakers are careful to gloss over their own culpability in the events related. Both speeches are carefully designed to affect the pilgrim emotionally: Francesca wants to win the pilgrim’s sympathy, while Ugolino wants to encourage Dante’s pity so that he will spread the story of Ruggieri’s guilt in the world.

But the pilgrim has seen much in the intervening cantos and is not so easily won over as he was when he met Francesca. Despite Ugolino’s somewhat accusatory aside to the pilgrim—“If you are not weeping now—do you ever weep?” (l. 42)—Dante shows no pity for the sinner. Instead he reacts in moral outrage, condemning Pisa in an apostrophe not for executing the traitor Ugolino but for including his innocent sons in the death sentence. The pilgrim has learned that scorn and righteous anger are the appropriate reactions to sin, rather than sentimental weakness toward the sinner. (It should probably be pointed out that, historically, Ugolino was imprisoned with two middle-aged sons and two grandsons, the younger of whom was 15. The “children” were not the young innocents Dante depicts, but for purposes of his own narrative, the poet Dante has altered some of the facts.) The question of whether Ugolino’s last line— “Then hunger proved more powerful than grief” (l. 75)—implies that he cannibalized the bodies of his dead sons is a point of critical contention. In his edition of the poem Charles Singleton pronounced that “such a view of the meaning here is hardly worth a serious rebuttal” (2.617). However more recent critics have indeed seriously considered the view and have pointed out the imagery of the passage and its thematic implications support the possibility that Dante intends the cannibalistic suggestion in this passage. First Ugolino’s entire tale is framed by his cannibalism of Ruggieri’s head. Of course this may only reflect the starved shade’s avenging himself with ironic justice on the shade of the one who starved him. But there are more important thematic allusions in the tale itself (see John Freccaro’s comments in Pinsky 352–353; see also Musa’s commentary 2.434). When Ugolino gnaws his hands in despair, his children believe that he does so out of hunger and offer themselves to him as food: “You were the one / who gave us this sad flesh; you take it from us!” (ll. 62–63). Scholars have pointed out how this offer echoes Christ’s eucharistic assertion in John 6.54: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (NRSV). Further the child Gaddo’s dying words in line 69—“Why don’t you help me?

Inferno Why, my father?”—seem to allude to Christ’s dying words from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27.46, NRSV). But Ugolino cannot see beyond the physical danger to the spiritual implications of these allusions. The children point the way to eternal life, but Ugolino is concerned only with his life on earth. His response to their concerns, even to their offered sacrifice, is to repress his grief, to make no response, to turn “to stone inside” (l. 49)—hardening his heart as Pharaoh did before God killed his firstborn. He refuses to weep—though he has accused Dante of cruelty for not weeping at the story—as he refuses to recognize the chance for salvation that his children naively show him. At the tale’s end Ugolino accepts the physical offer of the children’s flesh to extend his mortal life while missing the offer of Christ’s holy body as the key to eternal life. Ugolino’s cannibalism, thus, seems thematically motivated. The second half of Canto 33, dealing with Dante’s encounter with Friar Alberigo, raises questions even more significant for the Inferno as a whole. Of course here, too, the pilgrim displays the kind of objective intolerance for sin that has characterized his last two encounters. He also is depicted as taking part in the sin punished here in Ptolomea: here are the traitors to the laws of hospitality—those who make promises to protect and relieve others but treacherously betray them. In exchange for the friar’s story Dante promises to break the ice that covers Friar Alberigo’s eyes, vowing to go into Judecca, the lowest portion of Hell, if he lies. Of course since that is the pilgrim’s destination in any case—as a visitor rather than a tortured sinner—he is not technically lying. But he breaks his word, of course, with the comment that a traitor deserves to be betrayed. Most commentators believe that in this attitude the pilgrim approximates the views of Dante the poet. But I would suggest matters are more complex here: We have just witnessed the story of Ugolino’s betrayal by Ruggieri. No one would contend that it was a virtue for Ruggieri to have betrayed the traitor Ugolino. While the count may have received what he deserved, that fact does not make Ruggieri innocent. I think Dante’s actions here must be seen chiefly as his participation in the sin of this round. The pilgrim does show some

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spiritual progress, allowing himself no pity for the condemned sinners, but his spiritual growth is still incomplete at this point, and he has a good deal more to learn. His refraining from breaking the ice on Fra Alberigo’s eyes is certainly the right choice. The sinner’s frozen tears are a part of God’s punishment, and to free the friar’s eyes would be a presumptuous alteration of divine justice. To many readers, though, the most stunning aspect of Canto 33 is the fact that Dante has placed living sinners in Ptolomea. The kind of treachery punished here is so heinous that in some cases guilty souls leave their mortal bodies and fall directly to this place, leaving their earthly forms to be possessed by demons. Such an unorthodox doctrine is certain to give many readers pause. What about human free will? Can God justly damn a sinner before he has had the chance to repent? Cannot even the worst of sinners achieve salvation with a changed life or even through a deathbed repentance? Granted that God may punish some sinners with immediate retribution, Dante’s suggestion here still seems heretical if taken literally, although it has been suggested that his concept of demon possession is based on John 13.27, where at the Last Supper, Satan is said to enter into Judas. One allegorical interpretation that has been suggested is that a traitor like Friar Alberigo has so alienated himself from the rest of humanity by his crimes that his life is no longer human in any real sense; it is demonic. Considering the larger moral allegory of the entire poem, however, the doctrine expressed in Canto 33 makes perfect sense: As we have seen, the symbolic retribution or contrapasso exhibited in the previous circles of Hell all conflate the sin and its punishment: The sin itself is the punishment— on a moral level sin is Hell. Canto 33 illustrates that point more clearly than any previous cantos. The worse the sin, the greater the punishment; the greater the punishment, the deeper one is in Hell. If the sin is Hell itself, then the worst sins, like those of the round of Ptolomea, place the sinner more concretely and inescapably in a moral Hell. As they move into the final canto of the Inferno, many modern readers—their expectations distorted by contemporary mythologies—may be surprised to find Dante’s Satan a helpless sinner trapped at the

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bottom of Cocytus rather than actively reigning in Hell and spreading evil through the world. But for Dante the fallen angel is the principal sinner of the universe, and his punishment the same as that of the other sinners in Judecca: As they had, medieval Christians believed, Lucifer had treacherously and violently betrayed his natural lord and spiritual benefactor, God himself, by seeking to depose him through armed rebellion. For this he was cast from Heaven, his angelic beauty perverted to hideous grossness, and he is frozen now in the ice of Cocytus, forever separated from the warmth of divine love. Dante describes the fallen angel as a monster, giving him none of the grandeur of Milton’s Satan or the charm of Marlowe’s Mephistopheles. In the Inferno’s seventh and final address to the reader, Dante uses the conventional “inexpressibility topos,” claiming to find it impossible to do justice to the terrible vision of Satan, which left him stunned, neither dead nor alive. Yet he goes on to portray the monster in some detail. Dante’s Lucifer is a giant, far larger than Antaeus and his fellows in Canto 31. He is covered with shaggy hair and as a former seraph retains his six wings, although the wings are now like those of bats. Further Satan has three heads. Commentators have proposed a variety of interpretations for these heads: Some suggest they represent the three known continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia, or the three major political powers of Dante’s time (Rome, France, and Florence). Or the faces could represent the three categories of sin (incontinence, violence, and fraud) punished in the Inferno. Probably, however, Satan’s three faces are an infernal parody of the Trinity: As God exists in three persons, Satan—who tried to make himself a god— perverts that divine nature. Some believe that the three chief qualities associated with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are negatively reflected in the colors of Satan’s three faces: thus the yellow face denotes impotence, the opposite of power; the black face ignorance, the opposite of wisdom; and the red face hatred, the opposite of love. Dante’s choice of Judas, Brutus, and Cassius as the three chief sinners of history may also surprise modern readers somewhat. Judas Iscariot, of course,

is to be expected—as the betrayer of his spiritual master, the Son of God, Judas must belong in the same circle of Hell as his predecessor, Lucifer. But today we are not likely to think of Brutus and Cassius in the same category. For Dante, however, the Roman Empire was divinely ordained, destined to become the means for giving Christianity to the world. Thus on the secular level the two Romans’ betrayal of their benefactor Caesar, founder of the empire, was a sin of nearly the same severity as that of Judas. Through his depiction of the pilgrim’s confusion upon passing the center of gravity, Dante goes to great lengths to draw our attention to the precise physical position of Lucifer. He is frozen in the ice at the exact center of the Ptolemaic cosmos. In this system the nine moving spheres of Heaven circle the stationary Earth, so that the center of the Earth is the center of the universe, toward which, according to Aristotle, all objects of ponderous mass are drawn. In Dante’s symbolism weight signifies sin. Thus Satan, in the Earth’s physical center, is fixed at the point to which the weight of all the sin in the universe is naturally drawn. Dante is insightful enough regarding physical science to understand that passing through the center of gravity and emerging in the Southern Hemisphere has implications for the time frame of his narrative, and much of the last part of Canto 34 depends upon this time frame. In line 68 Virgil warns Dante that it will soon be night—that is, the evening of Holy Saturday is approaching. In Canto 1 Dante began his journey at sunset on Good Friday; therefore, it has taken the poets exactly 24 hours to move through Hell. Once the center of the Earth is passed, however, and the two begin their climb upward toward Purgatory on the other side of the Earth, Virgil tells the poet that the Sun has nearly reached “middle terce” (l. 96)—that is, about 7:30 A.M., between the canonical hours of prime (6:00) and terce (9:00). When it is night over Jerusalem (at the center of the hemisphere of land), it is morning over Mount Purgatory (at the center of the hemisphere of water, directly opposite Jerusalem). Scholars have had some difficulty explaining just how this 12-hour time difference affects the pilgrim. Some have suggested that time has moved forward

Purgatorio 12 hours; that would make it 7:30 on Easter morning when they begin their climb out of Hell. It seems more likely that the hemisphere of water is 12 hours behind Jerusalem, so that when Dante and Virgil begin their climb out, it is the morning of Holy Saturday. It is not clear how much time they take to clamber up from the pit. Since the poets took 24 hours to trek to the bottom of Hell, one might think it must take an equal amount of time to climb back out. If that were true, though, it would be daylight when they emerge in Purgatory—but it is clear that the stars are visible when they do. Dante merely says, in the last six lines of the Inferno (Canto 34, ll. 132–139), that they never rested but climbed out steadily. It would seem that their ascent is briefer than their descent, and this may suggest that Dante moves more easily as he leaves behind the weight of infernal sin, perhaps prefiguring the speed with which he will rise toward Heaven in the Paradiso. The most important symbolic point of these events, however, is that the poets must surface at the foot of Purgatory shortly before dawn on Easter morning, their emergence from Hell thereby paralleling Christ’s resurrection. Once they have set foot on Purgatory, they have left death and Hell behind and have entered the realm of salvation. This prevailing mood of optimism is reflected, too, in the Inferno’s final line: “We came out to see once more the stars” (34, l. 139). These points of heavenly light, invisible in the depths of Hell, stand as symbols of hope for the pilgrim, who from this moment will be ever moving upward, toward them. Each of the three main sections of the Commedia—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—ends with the same word: stelle or “stars.” The conclusions thus unite the parallel sections of the poem at the same time they underscore, by repetition, the direction that the pilgrim as Everyman, and the readers who identify with him, must travel in their journey toward God.

Purgatorio (1321) A reader who reads the Purgatorio with expectations from the Inferno may be inclined to see Dante’s

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second canticle as more of the same: sinners tormented with ingenious punishments appropriate to their individual misdeeds. But even the most casual reader immediately senses the vast difference in tone between the two texts. Here the bitterness, lamenting, and hopelessness of the eternally damned are replaced by a sense of joy and hope, for to land upon the shore of Purgatory is to enter the world of the saved. Thus the first rays of the Easter sunrise strike the pilgrim and Virgil as they emerge on this shore from Hell. The exact nature of these punishments and this hopefulness is clarified for the reader, and for the pilgrim Dante, in the central cantos of this canticle, in the comments of MARCO LOMBARDO (MARCO THE LOMBARD) on evil and free will and, particularly, in Virgil’s discourses on love, especially in Canto 17. Virgil notes that God implanted two kinds of love in the human soul. The first of these can never be wrong, since it is the instinctive desire of the soul to be reunited with God. The second kind of love does not err so long as it is in harmony with God’s will, but when it becomes perverted it always causes harm to others in sins of pride, envy, or wrath. When this love is insufficient, it causes sloth. When it is turned with excessive zeal toward worldly goods, it is the source of avarice, gluttony, and lust. The purpose of Purgatory—like the purpose of the sacrament of penance—is not retributive punishment for sin, but the corrective discipline of vice. In this Dante follows the Aristotelian notion of vice as a kind of flaw that results in a tendency to sin. Virtue, on the other hand, is a learned and reasoned tendency to act rightly, and it can be a habit formed by repetitive action. It is important to remember that entry into Purgatory is occasioned by the state of the soul at the moment of death. Since salvation could be brought about by a last-minute conversion (as in the case of MANFRED, whom Dante meets in Canto 3), many souls die without having formed a habit of virtue. Their goal in Purgatory is to eliminate their tendency toward vice and to reform their souls toward virtue, thus to refine those souls and ultimately enter God’s presence with their nature restored to the original sinless state of Adam before the Fall. Since this means redirecting their faulty love toward harmony

96 Purgatorio with the will of God, they are required to perfect their wills through this purgation. It is important to note that they do so not because of a sentence God has imposed upon them, but by their own free will, since their desire now is to achieve perfection. Thus the souls remain on each level of Purgatory until they themselves feel that they are ready to go on. When a soul like that of STATIUS in Canto 21 feels he has completed his corrective penance, he is free to move on toward heavenly bliss. Theologically these ideas about Purgatory were to a large extent Dante’s own interpretations. Indeed the Purgatorio is by far the most original of Dante’s imaginative otherworldly realms. Purgatory as a separate place in itself was, in the early 14th century, a rather new idea. Although the church had for centuries believed in the efficacy of prayers for the dead, invoking the authority of 2 Maccabees 12.40–46 (in which the Jews pray for God’s forgiveness of those killed in battle), and although early church fathers like SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO and Jerome had discussed the abstract idea of purgatorial punishments (based on passages like Christ’s admonition in Matthew 12.31–32 that sin against the Holy Spirit would not be forgiven in this age “or the age to come”), it was not until the use of the term purgatorium by Peter Comestor and Saint Bernard in about 1170–80 that the idea of Purgatory as a separate realm of the afterlife began to form. Pope Innocent III acknowledged the existence of Purgatory in 1210, and at the Council of Lyons in 1274 both Greek and Roman delegates agreed to accept the doctrine of Purgatory. It remained for Dante to give this concept a shape and a physical presence. He is completely original in placing Purgatory on an island in the Southern Hemisphere, directly opposite the city of Jerusalem, and in placing the Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden, on the peak of the mountain. Dante’s Purgatory has a three-part structure, with the lowest level, the Ante-Purgatory, peopled by souls that have not yet reached the stage at which they are ready to begin their self-willed purgation. These include the excommunicate, the indolent, and the late repentant, all of whom must wait before beginning their climb up the mountain. I should note here the importance of time in the

Purgatorio—of all the realms of the afterlife Purgatory is the only one in which time passes as it does among the living, since in fact Purgatory is a place on the earth itself. Thus Dante repeatedly draws the reader’s attention to what time it is in Jerusalem or the Ganges or the Pillars of Hercules when it is a specific time in Purgatory. Therefore the souls whom Dante meets are hyperaware of the passing of time and consistently implore Dante to ask their friends or relatives to pray for them, since that will lessen the time they must spend on the mountain. This Ante-Purgatory is Dante’s own invention, and he separates it from Purgatory proper by a steep cliff and by a door with two locks, guarded by an angel. This central section of Purgatory is composed of seven concentric terraces encircling the mountain, each of which is devoted to one of the seven deadly sins (or, more properly, vices): pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. Each soul must spend time on the terraces corresponding to the vices that still affect the soul’s will. Thus some souls may spend hundreds of years on one ledge, while others may need to do no penance there at all. All terraces are structured in roughly the same manner: Each circle begins with exempla of the virtue that directly opposes the particular vice purged on that level. The exempla always include an example from the life of the Virgin, plus one classical and one other biblical illustration. The penitents on each terrace all recite an appropriate prayer as they undergo an act of penance appropriate to their sin (the prideful, for example, walk with large stones on their backs that weigh them down with humility). Finally more exempla are shown, this time of the vice itself and the evil it causes. Clearly the penitents are urged to emulate the good examples and shun the evil ones. As Dante the pilgrim leaves each level, he hears an appropriate beatitude, and a guardian angel removes one of seven “p’s” (symbols of the seven vices) from his forehead in a final act of absolution. Indeed the entire action of each circle of Purgatory seems patterned after the sacrament of confession, with its penance and absolution. Another sharp division, this time a ring of fire, separates the Garden of Eden from Purgatory proper. Dante’s placement of the Earthly Paradise at the

Purgatorio peak of Mount Purgatory is certainly an unorthodox choice, but it makes sense for a number of reasons. It puts Eden directly opposite Jerusalem, so that the scene of humankind’s damnation is on the same axis as the place of our salvation. Christ’s redemptive act opened Purgatory to human souls, in Dante’s view, thus enabling them to climb toward God, resting at the mountain’s peak in Eden, to which they have returned in pure innocence, that human nature marred by Adam’s sin now fully restored to its pristine unfallen state. Thus all of salvation history is played out for the pilgrim Dante in a great heavenly pageant when he reaches the Earthly Paradise, glorifying the grand history of which his own salvation is a part. It is here, too (in Canto 30), that Beatrice finally makes her appearance, in a grand entrance that the reader has been anticipating since the first mention of her name in Canto 2 of the Inferno. Readers are often bewildered by her austere greeting of the pilgrim and her stern judgment of his sins. Allegorically however Beatrice here is a representation of Christ: She has been the force that awakened love in Dante, the one whose angelic qualities taught him to appreciate heavenly virtue, and the one whose death focused his thoughts on the afterlife. She appears here as she has always been to Dante—his own experience of Christ in his life. As an allegorized Christ she judges the pilgrim here as Christ will ultimately judge all humankind at the Last Judgment; thus the pilgrim’s ordeal is an allegory of that final judgment. For many readers the Purgatorio is Dante’s crowning achievement. It is certainly the most original of all Dante’s works and has much of the sensual imagery of the Inferno, but with a far more hopeful and inspiring tone.

ANTE-PURGATORY (CANTOS 1–9) Synopsis Having emerged from Hell at the foot of Mount Purgatory, Dante declares his intention to sing of the second realm of the afterlife, that in which the human soul is purged of sin and made ready to enter Paradise. As he had at the beginning of the Inferno proper the poet once more invokes the aid of the Muses, in particular Calliope, the muse of epic poetry.

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As the Inferno had ended with the statement that the poets had gone forth from Hell to see the stars once more, the pilgrim begins this second canticle by gazing at the heavens, admiring the light of Venus, the morning star, shining brightly just before dawn on Easter morning. He notes as well four other stars only visible here in the Southern Hemisphere—stars that no living human has seen since Adam left the Earthly Paradise. Dante is suddenly aware of an old, distinguished-looking man standing near him—one in whose face the light of the four stars shines brightly. Believing the poets to be sinners escaped from Hell, the old man accosts them, demanding to know how and why they had left the borders of the Inferno. Virgil, who recognizes this guardian of Purgatory’s shores as Cato the Younger (CATO OF UTICA), kneels in respect and motions for Dante to do the same. They are not infernal refugees, Virgil explains, but rather make this journey at the request of a heavenly lady for the sake of Dante’s salvation. Virgil tells Cato that Dante seeks freedom—presumably from sin. He goes on to identify himself as a soul from Limbo, where Cato’s wife, Marcia, longs for him. The old man answers that he is no longer moved by Marcia, since she is in Hell (from which Cato himself has somehow been rescued), and rejects Virgil’s apparent attempts at flattery. But for Beatrice’s sake he is glad to allow the poets to continue up the mountain. They must first, however, make their way back to the shore of the island, where Virgil is to wash Dante’s face and eyes of the stains of Hell and then is to tie a pliant reed from the shore around Dante’s waist. After giving these instructions, Cato disappears. The poets descend directly to the shore, where Virgil washes Dante’s face with the morning dew and then plucks one of the reeds from the shore. To Dante’s astonishment another reed springs up immediately to replace the one Virgil has broken. As Canto 2 opens, the sun begins to rise over Purgatory while Dante and Virgil stand on the shore, wondering where to begin their ascent of the mountain. Suddenly the pilgrim Dante notices a glowing red light moving toward them over the water at tremendous speed. As the light gets closer

98 Purgatorio and the two poets discern white wings within the glow, Virgil calls to Dante to fall to his knees, for it is an angel of the Lord. As the angel draws closer, Dante bows his head because of the intensity of the light, but he notes that the angel is piloting a miraculous ship over the waves, on which are more than 100 redeemed souls, singing the hymn In exitu Israel de Aegypto (“When Israel came out of Egypt”). The angel makes a sign of blessing over the souls as they disembark, then leaves as quickly as he had come. But the newcomers wander about, trying to familiarize themselves with the place. When they see the poets, they ask whether they know the road up the mountain, but Virgil answers that he and Dante are also newcomers to this place. The group of souls now notices that Dante is still breathing and gathers around him in amazement. Suddenly one of the throng rushes toward Dante, arms outstretched to hold him. Three times Dante tries to embrace the newcomer, but three times he fails—the apparently substantial bodies in Purgatory are merely shades of their earthly forms. Dante has recognized the newcomer’s voice as that of his friend the singer and musician CASELLA. Dante asks why Casella, who had died some months earlier, was only now arriving at the mountain, and Casella answers that the angelic boatman, who takes souls when he pleases, several times refused to allow him on his ship. Now, Casella says, the angel has returned to the mouth of the Tiber, where all redeemed souls gather. Dante now requests a song from Casella to refresh him from his arduous journey so far. Casella obliges by launching into a performance of Dante’s own CANZONE Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona (“Love that speaks to me in my mind”) from the third book of the CONVIVIO. Virgil and all the newly arrived souls are captivated by the music when suddenly Cato of Utica reappears, chastising the souls for their sloth and enjoining them to run to the mountain to begin their climb. Their reverie broken, the shades all rush toward the mountain, and Dante and Virgil join them in their wild dash. As Canto 3 opens and the souls all begin to move toward the mountain, Dante shows concern for Virgil, who seems chagrined by Cato’s rebuke and his own failure to stop Dante from slipping

into triviality with Casella’s love song. But Virgil soon recovers and with the pilgrim begins to stride toward the mountain. As they walk with the sun behind them, Dante notices only his own shadow, and he momentarily panics, thinking Virgil has deserted him. Virgil calms Dante, telling him that the bodies of the dead shades are made of substances other than earthly elements—like the spheres of the heavens. Thus Dante could not embrace Casella in the previous canto. But, Virgil says, the bodies of shades can feel pain as well as heat and cold (otherwise the sufferings of the damned in the Inferno would be meaningless). If this is difficult to understand, Virgil goes on, that is because it is beyond the grasp of human reason. If the secrets of salvation were attainable by human reason alone, Virgil goes on to say, then there would have been no need for the Virgin Mary to have borne her son, and intellectual giants such as PLATO and ARISTOTLE would not be eternally confined to Limbo. By now the poets have reached the foot of the mountain that rises as a sheer cliff before them. As Virgil puzzles over how the pilgrims might make their way up the rock face, Dante looks up to the left and sees a large group of souls moving on a ledge along the cliff face toward them at an incredibly slow pace, so slowly that they barely seem to be moving. Virgil and Dante approach them, but the souls draw back from the poets until Virgil asks them where the mountain slopes enough to begin to climb. Then a few of the souls move forward, but when they see Dante’s shadow they draw back again. Virgil explains that Dante is alive and is there because God has willed it. Now satisfied, the crowd of souls motions for the poets to move ahead and lead the way. As Dante and Virgil walk ahead, one of the shades in the crowd asks Dante whether the poet recognizes him. When Dante says he does not, the soul identifies himself as EMPEROR FREDERICK II’s natural son Manfred, who was killed in battle with CHARLES OF ANJOU at Benevento in 1266. Manfred had been excommunicated twice and was buried in unhallowed ground after the battle. Manfred recalls how his body was disinterred by the archbishop of Cosenza on the orders of Pope Clement IV and

Purgatorio cast outside church territory to rot unburied on the banks of the Verde River. But because he turned to God as he lay dying, Manfred was saved despite his sins. Thus, Manfred asserts, the curse of the church is ineffectual if one truly repents and returns to God. Nothing can be done by pope or bishop to prevent the salvation of a repentant soul. Those who, as Manfred and the rest of this crowd did, died scorning the church are destined to wait on the shore of Purgatory for 30 times the length of their excommunication. This time can be shortened, however, by prayers of the faithful on earth—thus Manfred wants Dante to ask his virtuous daughter, Constance, to pray for him. So absorbed is he with listening to Manfred’s story, the pilgrim does not notice that more than three hours have passed. The entire group of contumacious souls then points out a small gap in the cliff face where the poets may begin their ascent. In Canto 4 Virgil and Dante begin to climb, using hands and feet to make their way up through the narrow pass. Dante is overcome with exertion and daunted by the height of the mountain he sees above him. He calls to Virgil to slow down, but Virgil encourages him to climb a little farther to a small ledge that circles the mountain just ahead. When they reach the ledge, the pilgrims sit and rest. They face the east, and Dante is surprised to find the Sun at his left, to the north. Virgil explains that this is an effect of their being in the Southern Hemisphere. Dante recognizes how this must be true but now asks Virgil about what is really troubling him: How much more must they climb?, the exhausted poet asks. Virgil responds that Purgatory has a unique quality: It is excruciatingly difficult to climb at the beginning but becomes progressively easier to ascend the higher one climbs. When the climbing becomes effortless, Virgil says, Dante will have reached the end of the path and can rest. At that point a sarcastic voice from behind a nearby boulder points out that Dante will probably feel like sitting down before he gets to that point. When the poets look behind the stone, they see a group of shades, all sprawled lazily, and one shade in particular—his head hanging down and his arms wrapped around his knees—whom

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Dante recognizes. This figure sarcastically asks Dante whether he has learned enough about why the sun is on the left, and Dante gives a half-smile, greeting his old friend BELACQUA, the laziest man in Florence. Dante exclaims that he is glad he need no longer worry about Belacqua’s fate but asks why he is lingering there. The lethargic Florentine responds that because through indolence he put off turning to God until the end of his life, he and the others on this ledge must wait in Ante-Purgatory for as long as he made God wait. But as Manfred had, he adds that his waiting time may be shortened by the intercessory prayers of the faithful on earth. At that point an impatient Virgil urges Dante to get up and move on—it is already noon, and the poets have been on the island for six hours already.

The ascent on the way to Purgatory, from Canto 4 of the Purgatory, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

100 Purgatorio As the poets begin their climb up from the ledge of the indolent at the beginning of Canto 5, one of the shades notices that Dante’s body is solid and lets no light pass through. As the pilgrim looks back, distracted by their interest, Virgil chides him for being so easily sidetracked from his chief goal. Dante blushes in embarrassment and moves ahead. As they climb the slope, the poets meet another group of shades crossing in front of them and chanting a Miserere (Psalm 50 [modern 51]) in alternating parts. They stop in wonder when they notice Dante’s solid body. Two of the group rush to the poets to inquire about Dante, and Virgil responds that he is indeed a living man. The two run back to their group—moving as quickly as a meteor through the sky, the poet says. At this news the entire group surges forward, and Dante, overwhelmed, asks Virgil to keep moving. The shades ask Dante whether he recognizes any of them, eager for him to carry news of them back to earth. They explain that they all were sinners who died violent deaths. They did, however, turn to God as they were dying, and he in turn had filled their hearts with a longing for him. Dante replies that he recognizes none of them, but that he will be glad to follow their wishes if they have a request of him. The pilgrim is now approached by three of these late-repentant souls. The first does not identify himself but is clearly JACOPO DEL CASSERO OF FANO, a podestà of Bologna murdered in the marshes near Oriaco in 1298. Jacopo begs Dante to ask the people of Fano, Jacopo’s hometown, to pray for his soul. The second shade is that of BUONCONTE DA MONTEFELTRO (son of Guido da Montefeltro from Canto 27 of the Inferno), a Ghibelline killed by the Florentine Guelphs at the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO. Dante recognizes the name and wonders why Buonconte’s body was never found. Buonconte explains that he dragged himself, wounded, from the field and died near the banks of the Archiano River (a tributary of the ARNO) with the name of Jesus’ mother on his lips. When a devil arrived to take his soul, an angel of God prevented him because of that one prayer. But the devil caused Buonconte’s mortal remains to be washed away by the river and lost in the depths of the Arno. Buonconte laments

that no one, not even his widow, Giovanna, is praying for his soul. Finally the shade of a gentle and courteous woman steps forward. She identifies herself as La Pia (probably PIA DE TOLOMEI) and says she was born in Siena. In contrast to Buonconte’s full account she says only that her death was caused by one who had put his ring on her finger. No other details are given, but Pia very courteously asks that Dante remember her only after he has returned to the world and rested from his ordeal. Comparing his situation to that of a winner at a game of dice surrounded by hangers-on hoping to share in his winnings, Dante tries to leave behind the late-repentant, who still crowd around him hoping he can persuade their loved ones to pray for them. As Canto 6 opens, Dante recognizes several Italians who died violently among the faces pressing toward him (among them Benincasa da Laterina, Federigo Novello, and Count Orso of Mangona—son of NAPOLEONE DEGLI ALBERTI, the fratricide from Inferno 32). By promising to solicit prayers for them, Dante is able to extricate himself from the group. As he and Virgil move on, Dante asks the Latin poet about certain lines in his Aeneid in which Virgil denies the efficacy of prayer to alter the divine will (6.373–376). How can this be explained when so many of the souls in Purgatory beg for prayers from the faithful? Virgil responds that his words applied only to those who were separated from God. But if Dante wants a complete understanding of this point, he should wait until he meets Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise atop Mount Purgatory. At the mention of Beatrice’s name Dante is filled with new enthusiasm and is eager to climb on. Virgil cautions him, though, that they will only be able to travel during the daylight hours. The sun is now behind the mountain, and it is late afternoon on Easter Sunday. Now the poets catch sight of a solitary figure watching them from some way off. Virgil approaches him, confident that this soul will direct the poets to the best way up the mountain. The solitary shade is reluctant at first to address the pilgrims, but when he hears that Virgil is a native of Mantua, he rises and embraces his fellow townsman. This is the shade of the renowned troubadour poet SORDELLO.

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The Late Repenters, from Canto 5 of the Purgatorio, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

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When Dante sees the affection between these two Mantuans, he launches into a tirade against the Italy of his day that takes up the remainder of this canto. Beginning with an apostrophe to “slavish Italy” (l. 76), the poet laments the general lack of the kind of affection displayed here by the fellow countrymen from Mantua. The current political situation in Italy pits kinsman against kinsman. Church leaders are mismanaging the country, and the Hapsburg Emperor Albert stays in Germany and does nothing to create unity and peace in the region. All the towns of Italy are governed by tyrants, Dante claims. The poet ends with a sarcastic jibe at Florence as the model city for Italian politics: the epitome of the civil strife that characterizes the region. Canto 7 begins at the point of the action where Dante’s outburst had interrupted it. Sordello and Virgil embrace several times before Sordello finally asks Virgil’s identity. When the Latin poet reveals himself, Sordello bows his head and embraces Virgil with awe and reverence as the glory of the Latin tongue, and he wonders what grace or merit has allowed him the privilege of this sight. He asks Virgil whether he is indeed in Hell and where he dwells there. Virgil describes Limbo as a place of no torments but of hopelessness, describing the unbaptized infants and the virtuous pagans who reside there with him. He then asks Sordello to show them the fastest way to the entrance to Purgatory proper. Sordello offers to be their guide to that gate, but he warns that night is approaching, and no one can climb the mountain at night—although the souls are allowed to move down the mountain in the darkness. He proposes to take the poets to a place to rest for the night, among a group of souls they will be interested in meeting. They agree, and Sordello leads them to a beautiful valley filled with bright flowers and lovely fragrances. As the poets stand on the edge of the downward slope, Dante hears souls singing the compline hymn Salve Regina (“Hail, Queen”). From that vantage point, before the sun fails, Sordello points out to the poets eight figures among the crowd of negligent rulers who people the valley, listing many of their political failings at the

same time (the choice of eight figures is probably a reflection of Sordello’s famous poem on the death of his patron, Blacatz, in which he rebukes eight European princes for their political failings). He begins with RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG, who neglected his duty toward Italy. He also points out Ottakar II, king of Bohemia, who warred against Rudolph; Philip III (the Bold), king of France and father of the king Sordello calls “the plague of France,” Philip IV; Henry “the Fat” of Navarre, who died of his own obesity; Pedro III of Aragon, who died without heirs; Charles of Anjou, who defeated Manfred and conquered the kingdom of Sicily at the pope’s behest; HENRY III of England, sitting by himself, who enjoyed a life of piety more than one of political action; and WILLIAM VII of Montferrat, who failed to put down a rebellion in the city of Alessandria. Light begins to fade at the beginning of Canto 8, as one of the souls in the valley stands up and, palms pressed together in prayer, begins to sing the compline hymn Te lucis ante (“Before [the ending of] the day”) so beautifully that Dante is lost in the music. The other negligent princes soon join in as they watch the heavens. Abruptly the poet breaks off and addresses the reader directly, drawing attention to the scene that is about to follow. In words that recall his similar caution to the reader about the difficult allegory in Canto 9 of the Inferno, Dante tells the reader to focus on this scene, for the truth is covered in a thinner veil here. Returning to the narrative, Dante describes the souls of the valley all gazing expectantly at the sky, when he suddenly becomes aware of a pair of angels descending from Heaven. The angels carry blunted swords broken off at the ends, and they are clothed in green, the color of their wings. The angels alight, one to the pilgrim’s right and one to the left on opposite sides of the valley. Dante can see their golden hair but cannot bear the brightness of their faces. Sordello reveals that the angels have arrived from the Virgin Mary to guard the valley against the invasion of the serpent. As Dante gazes about in fear, wondering where the serpent will emerge, Sordello tells the poets it is time to descend into the

Purgatorio    103 valley. But after only a few steps into the valley, one shade stops Dante and peers intently into his face, drawing close to see him in the deepening darkness. At once Dante recognizes Nino (Ugolino) Visconti, his old friend from Pisa, and rejoices to find him in Purgatory. Nino asks when it was that Dante died, but Dante replies that he is still in his first life. Both Nino and Sordello back away from him, astounded, and Nino calls to another shade to witness the marvel. But Nino takes the opportunity to ask Dante to contact his daughter, Giovanna, and ask her to pray for him, emphasizing the power of innocent prayer. For his widow, Beatrice, Nino has only rebuke. She has, he says, put off her white mourning garments and is about to be remarried. His face burning with righteous zeal, Nino predicts the disaster that will befall her new husband (Galeazzo Visconti of Milan, whose coat of arms is a serpent), who will be exiled from Milan very soon (in fact in 1302). Now the pilgrim’s attention is drawn once again to the heavens, where he sees that the four bright stars visible in the morning have disappeared and have been replaced by three more brilliant stars in the direction of the South Pole. Sordello interrupts Dante’s stargazing to point toward the serpent, slithering through the grass and flowers into the valley. Sordello calls it “our adversary” (l. 95), and Dante suggests that it may be the same snake that tempted Eve. The two angels now fly down from the valley’s rim, descending toward the serpent, who takes flight at their approach. The shade invited earlier by Nino now addresses Dante. It is Corrado (Conrad) II Malaspina, who asks whether the pilgrim has any news of Val di Magra, where he used to rule. Dante replies that he has never visited that land, but that all of Europe has heard of it and of the glorious Malaspina family. Although the world is perverted by what the pilgrim calls “Wicked Head” (possibly referring to the pope), the Malaspina family, Dante assures Corrado, remains virtuous. In response Corrado delivers another prophecy regarding Dante’s future: Before seven more years have passed, Dante himself will know firsthand the virtue of the Malaspina family (alluding to the assistance the family would give Dante during his exile).

The Eagle, from Canto 9 of the Purgatorio, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

It is near dawn when the pilgrim, still in his mortal body (weighed down by the flesh inherited from Adam), is overcome by weariness and lies down in the grass of the valley to sleep. He dreams of a great golden eagle that swoops down and snatches him up, as Jove once seized Ganymede, and carries him skyward into the sphere of fire (in medieval cosmography, just below the sphere of the Moon) where he and the eagle both burn. He awakens from the heat of the fire dazed and afraid. He is relieved to find Virgil beside him but surprised that it is daylight and that he is looking out over the sea. Virgil tells Dante not to be afraid, explaining that they have now arrived at the gate that leads into Purgatory proper. While the pilgrim slept, Virgil tells him, a lady named Lucy arrived, took his sleeping body in her arms, and carried him to this spot. Virgil followed her, leaving Sordello and the

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others behind in the valley. When the lady set Dante down, she showed Virgil the gate and then awakened the sleeping pilgrim as she left. Reassured, the pilgrim begins to climb toward the gate. In another address to the reader the poet warns that his verse is about to become more artful. As they approach the gate, Dante sees that there are three steps leading to what at first appears to be merely a gap in the cliff wall. On the top step is an angel whose face is too bright for the pilgrim to look upon, and the angel holds a naked sword. The guardian asks who the travelers are and why they have come, and Virgil responds that a lady of Heaven has directed them to this gate. The angel welcomes them and tells them to go forward. Virgil assists Dante up the steps: The first is shining white marble, the second dark purple and crumbling, the third as red as blood. On this third step the feet of the angel rest as he sits on the threshold of the gate, and Virgil urges Dante to ask the guardian to unlock the portal. The pilgrim falls on his knees, beating his breast three times, and begs the angel to turn the lock. With the point of his sword the angel cuts seven p’s into Dante’s forehead, instructing him to wash these wounds after he enters the gate. Then from his ash-colored robes the guardian draws out two keys, one silver and the other gold, and uses them to unlock the gate. One, he tells Dante, is more precious, but the other needs more wisdom to use, and it is the second key that finally turns the lock. Saint Peter entrusted these keys to him, the angel says, with the instruction to admit too many rather than too few. Now the angel pushes open the door, inviting Dante to enter but warning him not to look back or he will be forced to leave. As the gate opens, the hinges make a grating sound like thunder. But the noise sounds sweet to the pilgrim, and as he passes in he seems to hear the sound of voices chanting the hymn Te Deum laudamus (“We praise you, O God”). As Canto 9 closes, the poets have entered Purgatory. Commentary In the first canto of the Purgatorio we are clearly in another world. The joy and anticipation Dante feels as the second canticle begins is in sharp contrast to

the despair and dread that filled him through most of the Inferno. The difference, of course, is that in setting foot on the slopes of Purgatory, he has entered the realm of the saved. The recognition of sin is complete; now begins its purgation. But the difference between the souls of Purgatory and the shades in Hell is that here the souls know that they are saved and on their way to Paradise. The poet’s invocation to the Muses (ll. 8–12) links the beginning of this poem to the beginnings of the INFERNO (Canto 2, l. 7) and of the PARADISO (Canto 1, ll. 13–27), at the same time signaling a new beginning. Specifically Dante invokes Calliope, chief of the nine Muses and so the muse of epic poetry. Certainly Dante’s poem is epic in scope, but it does not celebrate the heroic action typical of epics. Thus Dante singles out Calliope not because of her association with the epic but because of her defeat of the daughters of Pierus. In Metamorphoses 5.294–678 OVID tells the story of the nine presumptuous daughters of the Macedonian king Pierus, who challenged the Muses to a singing contest. Pierus’s daughters sang a song of hubris, glorifying the giants who rebelled against the gods. Chosen to sing for the Muses, Calliope puts the Pierides to shame, and the defeated daughters are turned to magpies (as Dante mentions in lines 1–12). The story is a lesson in humility, and therefore Calliope is the appropriate Muse for this second canticle, whose chief theme is humility. That theme, in fact, underlies the incident of the reed at the end of Canto 1. All scholars concur that the reed symbolizes humility: The poets must descend to the shore—humble themselves—in order to pluck the reed. It is pliable and bends to gird Dante’s waist; Dante actually calls the plant itself “humble” in line 135. The reed thus replaces the cord that Dante tossed into the abyss to summon Geryon in Canto 16 of the Inferno, which, according to one interpretation, suggested his naïve self-confidence or pride. According to Cato Dante must wear the reed in order to pass through Purgatory—suggesting that one must be humble to perform the acts of contrition necessary to purge sin. But the reed also becomes a sort of talisman, recalling the golden bough that Aeneas was required to carry before

Purgatorio him through Hades in Book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid. When another reed springs up immediately to take the place of the one Virgil plucks, it is a direct allusion to the Aeneid (6.136–144), where the golden bough is replaced as soon as it is removed. In Purgatory humility is the golden bough, the talisman that gives one safe passage. Readers may be unsure as to the significance of the four stars Dante sees in the heavens at the beginning of this canto. In Dante’s geography Purgatory stands directly opposite Jerusalem amid a hemisphere of water. Atop Purgatory, as we shall see, is the Earthly Paradise. After the Fall Adam and Eve were exiled from Paradise and forced to live in the hemisphere of land, the Northern Hemisphere, opposite Paradise. On the literal level Dante realizes that there are stars in the Southern Hemisphere that could not be visible in the north and thus asserts he is the first living man since Adam to have seen these stars. Allegorically these stars probably represent the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance). In Canto 8 Dante will see three more stars (the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity) that rise in the evening to replace these four. According to medieval theology the four cardinal virtues were infused into Adam and Eve, but since the fall, human nature has been so marred that the virtues must now be acquired. These four in particular are available to pagans as well as Christians—it was, after all, the pagan philosophers Plato and Aristotle who first identified them, and Dante remarks on how brightly these stars shine on the face of the pagan Cato. The role of Cato is another difficulty of this canto. As a pagan of the Stoic school Cato should be consigned, with Virgil, to Limbo. Because of his suicide, we may even expect to find him deeper in Hell, with PIER DELLE VIGNE in circle seven of the Inferno. As a rebel against Caesar he might even belong with Brutus and Cassius in the lowest depths of Hell. Yet Dante has given him a place outside Hell, as guardian of the realm of the saved. It may have been Virgil’s identification of Cato as lawgiver of the virtuous souls in Elysium (Aeneid 8.670) that first suggested Dante’s use of him as guardian here. Cato, it seems, has been called from

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Limbo specifically for this task, and perhaps this is less surprising than it might be, since the pagan Virgil has the duty of guiding Dante through this realm. But in line 75 Virgil seems to imply that Cato—who will wear a “radiant” garment on the last day—will ultimately be received into Paradise. Dante may view Cato’s suicide in terms of his own Stoic ethic and see it as a positive statement of the love of freedom. He may view Cato as the embodiment of the cardinal virtues that shine so brightly in his face. It may be also that Cato is a perfect symbol of forgiving love, since he welcomed his wife, Marcia, back after she had married another man. Since the effect of Purgatory is the ultimate freedom from sin, and since the cardinal virtues will be important in the purging of those sins, and moreover since God’s forgiving love makes Purgatory possible for repentant sinners, Cato thus becomes the perfect allegorical symbol to guard the holy mountain. The eventual salvation of Cato alluded to by Virgil transcends all of this, however, and cannot be explained by orthodox theology. There is room for miracles and special dispensations in Dante’s eternal world, however, as the case of TRAJAN (MARCUS ULPIUS TRAJANUS) will demonstrate in Canto 10. Ultimately that may be the most satisfying explanation for Cato’s extraordinary treatment here. Dante’s elaborate description of the sunrise that opens Canto 2 reminds us that it is sunset on the other side of the world in Jerusalem—and that it is midnight on the Ganges, the easternmost point of human habitation in Dante’s geography. This all serves to emphasize the point that of the three realms of the afterlife, Purgatory is the only one that exists in time. Therefore time and the passage of time are major preoccupations of this second canticle of the Comedy. The specific time of Canto 2 is sunrise (6:00 A.M.) on Easter Sunday, 1300. This gives special significance to the hymn that the newly arrived souls are singing. In exitu Israel de Aegypto is the opening of Psalm 114 (“When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language”), a song of thanksgiving to the Lord for freeing Israel from bondage in Egypt. Medieval Christians saw this deliverance as prefiguring

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Christ’s resurrection from the bondage of death, precisely what is celebrated on Easter Sunday. For Dante the significance goes further. In his “Letter to Can Grande” Dante uses this particular verse to illustrate the four different levels on which his own text was to be interpreted. On the literal level the line denoted the deliverance of the Israelites in Moses’ time; on the allegorical level Christ’s resurrection was signified. Further, Dante explains to Can Grande, on the moral level the line suggests how Christ’s sacrifice frees each individual soul from the bondage of sin. Finally on the anagogical level the text suggests the soul’s escape from the bondage of the physical world to the freedom of eternal bliss. This theme of freedom from bondage will continue throughout Purgatory and helps explain the use of Cato, martyr to freedom, as this realm’s guardian. The angel boatman who guides the souls to Purgatory’s shore parallels the role of Charon, boatman of the Acheron who ferries the damned into Hell in Canto 3 of the Inferno. But the description of the angel’s speed also recalls that of Phlegyas, boatman of the Styx in Inferno 8, whose boat shoots across the water like an arrow. Finally the account of the angel’s boat also echoes that of Ulysses’ last voyage (Inferno 26): not only does the angel’s boat retrace the route that took Ulysses five months to travel, but the description of the angel’s wings (ll. 25–26) also calls to mind Ulysses’ description of his crew’s oars as wings (Inferno 26, l. 125). These kinds of echoes of and parallels with the Inferno will continue through the poem. Dante will also allude to his own earlier poetry several times in the Purgatorio, beginning here with Casella’s rendition of Dante’s canzone Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona. While in the CONVIVIO Dante interprets this poem allegorically, identifying the lady of the poem with Philosophy, here it seems clear that it is perceived as a love song. Dante depicts his verses as having the power to hold Casella’s listeners in rapt attention. But Cato’s interruption makes it clear that there is something negligent in their pausing to listen. Art and music, as well as the romantic love celebrated in this song, as other humanistic pursuits, may be valuable in the physical world, but here they only distract the

newly arrived shades from what must be their single purpose: purging their sins and restoring their souls to God’s pure likeness. This may also explain Cato’s brusque dismissal of Virgil when he mentions Cato’s wife, Marcia, in Canto 1: Like art, family ties must be subordinate to spiritual concerns in Purgatory, and Marcia is, after all, in Hell. The figure of Casella raises an important issue. Dante’s affection for the musician is clear—in a scene that alludes to Aeneas’s threefold attempt to embrace his dead wife’s shade in the second book of the Aeneid (ll. 792–794), the pilgrim tries to hold Casella. Yet Dante has clearly made Casella tardy in his arrival in Purgatory. Denied passage from the angel at first, Casella says that in the past three months the angel boatman has been taking everyone. Scholars believe this alludes to POPE BONIFACE VIII’s plenary indulgence, declared for any who made a pilgrimage to Rome during the Jubilee Year of 1300. Though the indulgence did not extend to departed souls, Dante may be following a popular tradition by including Casella in the general pardon. But the real question is, Why has Casella been held back so long? The answer is probably the nature of Purgatory itself. The souls in Dante’s Purgatory are not condemned to suffer for any particular length of time; rather they pass through the different kinds of penance of their own will, staying at each level as long as they consider necessary to make themselves clean of each sin. Souls in Purgatory move on when they are ready; if Casella has just now arrived, it is because he was not ready to begin his purgation until now. Readers who have just finished the scene in which the pilgrim Dante has kicked the apparently quite solid head of BOCCA DEGLI ABATI in Canto 32 of the Inferno may be surprised to read Virgil’s analysis in Canto 3 of the diaphanous bodies of shades in the afterlife. Virgil does say that these ethereal bodies can suffer pain, and one might explain such scenes in the Inferno in that way, suggesting that the solidity of Bocca’s head is illusory. Or one might simply acknowledge, as some scholars do, that Dante is sometimes inconsistent if it suits his purpose in an individual canto. In any case a more thorough explanation of the nature of spiritual bodies will occur in Canto 25.

Purgatorio Perhaps more important in Virgil’s discourse are his comments on the limits of human reason: Human beings simply cannot expect to understand some metaphysical questions. The innate desire for truth and for knowledge of God that the great philosophers manifested was not enough to place them among the elect. This is true, Virgil acknowledges, of Plato and Aristotle as well as “many others” (l. 44), after which he bows his head in anguish. It is clear that Virgil himself is among those “others,” and that here among the souls of the blessed, he must feel the pang of his eternal damnation to Limbo more sharply than ever before. As Dante advances up the mountain of Purgatory, the figure of Virgil will arouse the reader’s pity more and more. In Canto 3 Dante and Virgil meet the first group of late repentant souls who people the section of the mountain beneath the gate that leads into Purgatory proper. This is the Ante-Purgatory, or the area before Purgatory. Here the souls who waited until the end of their lives to turn to God now wait for their chance to climb the mountain and be purged of their sins. The waiting is not a punishment in the sense of the varied punishments of the Inferno. Rather it is a purgation. The misplaced priorities that led these souls to postpone turning to God must be eliminated. A delay of several hundred years before climbing the mountain to begin the trek toward Heaven is sure to whet the appetites of those forced to wait so long. In a sense this strategy has been prefigured in the previous canto: When the newly arrived souls stopped to pay attention to Casella’s song, their attention was turned from their primary goal. But upon Cato’s rebuke, they began to rush eagerly toward the mountain. That kind of eagerness will surely characterize the late repentant when they are finally released from their long wait. The first group of late repentant souls is characterized as comprising the “contumacious,” a term that denotes disobedience to the authority of the church. Most are excommunicate. Their extremely slow movement seems to be simply a physical image of their agonizing wait. It should be noted that when Dante and Virgil turn to their left to approach the group, the crowd of souls motions for

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the poets to turn the other way and move ahead. In the Inferno the poets traveled consistently to the left, or clockwise around each circle. Here the proper direction is to the right—an example of the traditional negative associations attached to the left, or “sinister,” side. Certainly Dante’s placing of Manfred, the excommunicate enemy of three successive popes, in Purgatory was a bold move that must have surprised many of his first readers. Dante emphasizes the infinite mercy of God for the truly repentant sinner. The poet also introduces at the end of Canto 3 the theme of intercession that will be reiterated throughout this section of the Purgatorio. Dante follows orthodox doctrine by asserting that the prayers of faithful Christians can help those in Purgatory, particularly that they can lessen the time of waiting for the late repentant souls in Ante-Purgatory. Canto 4 begins with an apparent digression concerning the unity of the soul, a question of concern for Scholastic philosophers of the High Middle Ages. Plato had proposed the idea that human beings possessed three separate souls: a vegetative one, which was seated in the liver and governed life and growth; a sensitive one, which was seated in the heart and governed movement and emotion; and an intellective one, which was seated in the brain and governed human reason. While Aristotle modified Plato’s concept somewhat, it was SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS who reconciled this classical doctrine with orthodox Christianity: Each person has a single soul, Aquinas maintained (for in a Christian sense, it would be unjust for three separate souls to be subject to the same ultimate judgment), but that single soul is constituted of three separate faculties—the vegetative, sensitive, and intellective. Aquinas’s proof of this was that the soul, if strongly preoccupied with one function, might completely ignore the others. Separate souls, he argued, would preserve their independence. In his discussion of pain, Aquinas says: Since all the powers of the soul are rooted in the one essence of the soul, it must needs happen, when the intention of the soul is strongly drawn towards the action of one power, that it is withdrawn from the action of another power: because the soul, being one, can only have one

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intention. The result is that if one thing draws upon itself the entire intention of the soul, or a great portion thereof, anything else requiring considerable attention is incompatible therewith. (Summa theologica I–II, q. 37, a. 1)

Dante uses his conversation with Manfred, which has so distracted him that he has failed completely to notice the passage of time, as another such proof of the unity of the soul. For some readers this Scholastic discussion may seem out of place, an interruption of the forward thrust of the narrative. But it should be noted that even as the Comedy is an allegory of the individual soul’s journey to salvation, it is also a fictional verification of the truth of orthodox Christian doctrine, and as the pilgrim ascends higher and higher toward the beatific vision at the climax of the Paradiso, he will engage more and more in theological questions. The allegorical significance of the narrow passageway in the rock face through which the poets begin their ascent is clear to those familiar with the Gospels: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it,” advises Christ in Matthew 7.13–14 (NRSV). The moral allegory of the poets’ struggle through this narrow fissure is implied, as well, by Virgil’s explanation of how the mountain is most difficult to climb at the beginning but becomes easier the higher one ascends: It is the initial turn from sin to repentance that is the most difficult. The habit of a faithful life becomes easier the longer one stays in it, and easiest of all when one receives the perfection of God’s grace. The souls Dante encounters in this canto, represented by the lazy Belacqua, are those who never advanced beyond the first turning to God in their earthly lives. These indolent shades are forced to wait in Ante-Purgatory, as were the contumacious. But the waiting period for the indolent is much shorter—they are only stalled on this ledge for the same length of time they waited to turn from sin in their lives on earth. But again we are reminded that the prayers of the faithful might lessen the waiting time for the indolent.

Virgil’s impatience at the conclusion of Canto 4 seems motivated by his observing in Dante signs of the indolence that affects the souls here. The pilgrim had lost sight of his goal in talking with Manfred at the beginning of the canto and now seems willing to wait on the ledge with Belacqua, resting for some undefined period. Virgil reminds Dante that it is already noon on Easter Sunday, and it is time to move on. The souls Dante encounters in Canto 5 have all died violently, but each, on the point of death, turned to God with sincere repentance. Now they are in Ante-Purgatory and, as the indolent and excommunicate below them, must wait before beginning their purgation. Unlike the last two groups however these penitents display their eagerness to be on their way by the speed that accompanies their actions. Two of them rush forward to greet Dante and rush back with the news that he is alive—at which the entire crowd presses forward, eager to have him beg the living for intercessory prayers. This group sings the Miserere, one of the seven penitential psalms. From this point on each group of souls in Purgatory will chant its own appropriate prayer. In this case it is Psalm 51, whose first verses express precisely the mood of the late repentant sinners in this group: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. (Psalm 51.1–3, NRSV)

This psalm, regularly sung as part of the Office of the Dead, was also spoken by a priest conducting absolution for an excommunicate who has died but has shown signs of contrition before his death. Such an absolution would entitle the deceased to Christian burial. This parallels the situation of the late repentant sinners of this group—they were not excommunicate, but they certainly seemed unlikely to be saved before their deathbed conversions. In any case the sentiments of the psalm—asking God in his great mercy to cleanse

Purgatorio    109 one from sin—are appropriate for any of the souls in Purgatory. Two of the souls who approach the pilgrim in this canto are intended to contrast sharply with particular sinners in the Inferno. First Buonconte da Montefeltro’s description of the struggle between the angel and devil for his soul surely should recall the similar struggle between the devil and Saint Francis for the soul of Buonconte’s father, Guido, in Canto 27 of the Inferno. In the latter case Guido had retired from military life to become a friar, trying to prepare his soul for salvation. He broke his vows through his evil counsel when Pope Boniface absolved him in advance, and he died trusting in the pope’s absolution. But the devil drags him to Hell anyway, arguing that he could not be forgiven while he still intended to sin. In Buonconte’s case the devil argues that his single little tear cannot be enough to undo a life of sin. But in fact since the tear indicates sincere repentance, Buonconte’s dying invocation of the Virgin Mary is enough to save him. Thus Dante makes it clear that the outward forms of religion (e.g., the pope’s absolution) are ineffective where there is no genuine inner contrition. “La Pia” is a character who, after the lengthy narration of Buonconte’s dramatic death, provides a humble and gentle counterpart. Her four unaffected lines tell a much simpler story. One assumes that since she needed a last-minute conversion to be saved, she was sinful in life. Dante probably sees her as an adulterous woman, as at least some commentators suggest that her husband’s suspicions of her unfaithfulness led to her murder. But Pia’s comments here are all courteous and self-effacing. Her use of the article la with her name gives an air of intimacy to her speech, since (as Singleton points out in his edition) she is speaking the way one would if he were talking about her, rather than to her (2, 107). Her kindness and thoughtfulness are revealed by her entreaty that the pilgrim ask people to pray for her only after he has had a chance to rest from his own difficult journey. Almost certainly Pia is meant to contrast with Francesca da Rimini, who appears at just this point (Canto 5) of the Inferno. Francesca, the only other woman to speak with the pilgrim thus far in the Comedy, was

also a woman killed by her husband because of an adulterous affair. But where Francesca’s account is long, self-aggrandizing, and rhetorically complex, designed to win the pilgrim’s sympathy while settling responsibility for her sins everywhere but on herself, Pia’s account is brief and self-effacing, asking only for prayers. Francesca’s self-centered failure of self-knowledge has earned her a place in Hell. Pia’s sincere kindness and humility are a part of her salvation. As he did in Canto 4, Dante devotes much of the early part of Canto 6 to a theological question: Since so many of the souls in Purgatory emphasize the efficacy of intercessory prayer, the pilgrim wants to know why Virgil denied the effectiveness of prayer in the Aeneid. Dante is no doubt referring to the passage of Virgil’s (6.373–376) in which Aeneas, on his visit to Hades, finds his

Buonconte da Montefeltro, from Canto 5 of the Purgatorio, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Para­dise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

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drowned pilot Palinurus languishing on the bank of the Styx. Because he is unburied, the gods have denied him passage over the river into the land of the dead. The shade of Palinurus pleads with Aeneas to ferry him over the river into Hades. But Aeneas’s guide the Sybil chastises the shade, telling him that human prayer cannot change the decrees of the gods. Virgil tells Dante that this assertion applied only to those souls who are not united with God (i.e., pagans, the damned, and those otherwise outside God’s grace). The prayers of those in a state of grace are expressions of holy love, which is never contrary to divine justice. Therefore a loving prayer can, in one instant, cancel the penitential debt of a shade waiting in Ante-Purgatory. But grace is a subject beyond the limits of reason; therefore Virgil, as the figure of reason, advises Dante to wait until he sees Beatrice at the top of the mountain to be completely satisfied on such questions. The pilgrim’s passionate response to the sound of Beatrice’s name, and his eager desire to push forward to the mountaintop, are sure to be read literally as Dante’s ardent wish to see his beloved Beatrice once more. But on an allegorical level the passage may be read as the pilgrim’s turning from the worldly matters that have held back the laterepentant sinners from beginning their own journey up the mountain, and a renewed zeal for what the figure of Beatrice represents: divine love or grace. The figure of Sordello is clearly an important one. He is the first soul in Purgatory who is presented alone, rather than as a part of a group. He sits with a haughty, disdainful air, hardly acknowledging the poets until he learns that Virgil hails from his own hometown of Mantua. Some critics have seen Sordello’s stately bearing as reminiscent of the souls in Limbo (Inferno 4, ll. 112–114), and thus as foreshadowing Sordello’s welcome of Virgil (one of those residents of Limbo) as a kindred spirit. But others have seen Sordello’s aloofness and contemptuous demeanor as paralleling FARINATA in Canto 10 of the Inferno. Both Farinata and Sordello are political figures, and both cantos contain political prophecies. Ultimately both look forward to another solitary figure of great majesty, that of Dante’s ancestor CACCIAGUIDA in Canto 15 of the

Paradiso, who pronounces the ultimate political prophecy of the poem. Sordello’s reputation for political integrity seems based chiefly on his complaint on the death of the Provençal lord Blacatz of Aups. In it Sordello laments the passing of Blacatz as the last representative of true chivalry, and he rebukes eight other European princes for their political failings. The tone of that poem no doubt underlies Dante’s outburst on the current political situation that ends this canto. When Sordello embraces his fellow Mantuan, Virgil, that simple act of fraternal love—precisely the element that is lacking in Italy’s current political environment—sends Dante into a tirade. Here the poet, speaking in his own voice, stops the narrative for 76 lines of scathing invective. Italy, he says, is like a wild beast, a horse without a rider or the bridle that could be provided by imperial law. The cities of Italy are ruled by tyrants, and behind the walls built to keep danger out, citizens devour one another like animals. Feuds between families and parties tear the Italian cities apart— Dante specifically mentions the Montecchi and Cappelletti of Cremona (Shakespeare’s Montagues and Capulets). The poet lashes out at the two main causes of all this strife. The first is the church. He has already (in Inferno 19, ll. 115–117) asserted that corruption entered the church when it acquired wealth and power from the Donation of Constantine. Now he attacks the clergy for their interference in secular affairs and charges that, by ignoring Christ’s mandate to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s (Matthew 22.21), they have allowed the political situation to spin out of control (ll. 93–99). The second cause of the problem is the emperor. Italy’s internal wars are caused by a lack of central authority. The Emperor could provide that authority. But the emperor at the fictional date of the Comedy, the German Albert of Hapsburg (elected emperor in 1298), was so preoccupied with events in the north that he never even visited Italy. His negligence has allowed the Italian lords to make war on one another with impunity, and this situation has destroyed the Italian people.

Purgatorio The poet’s diatribe concludes with a bitterly sarcastic attack on his own city. Florence is the perfect exemplar of the vicious civil strife and corruption he has described infecting Italy in general. Florentines merely talk of justice but never demonstrate it. They seek public office only when they believe they will profit from it. They change their laws from one month to another. In a final memorable image Dante says that Florence is like a sick woman, tossing and turning in her bed and unable to find any rest or comfort. Sordello’s effusive praise of Virgil at the beginning of Canto 7 is curious: It is as if for Sordello Virgil’s earthly reputation is more significant than the fate of his soul, which Virgil makes clear is condemned to Limbo for eternity. Overall Sordello’s position here in Ante-Purgatory is puzzling. If he is for the moment confined to this space on the mountain, he must be numbered among the late repentant. Yet he seems to belong to no particular group. He guides the pilgrims to the Valley of Princes, where (in tones that echo his famous lament on the death of Blacatz) he comments on the Negligent Rulers, sometimes pointing out failings in their political lives. But Sordello is not a part of this group; nor is he a part of the group that died violent deaths introduced in the previous canto. Perhaps his enthusiastic greeting of Virgil and his concern with the political lives of the princes suggest that he, like the princes themselves, was too involved in worldly affairs to focus adequately on his spiritual life. But since he is not a prince himself, he stands alone. When Sordello explains to the pilgrims the law that governs movement in Purgatory, we are reminded again that Purgatory is the one realm of the afterlife that exists in time. Night falls and day dawns in this realm, and according to the divine plan, the souls cannot move up the mountain at night, though they can move down if they wish. On the literal level, of course, this makes some sense because of the difficulty of climbing in the dark, but there is a clear allegorical intent as well: Throughout the Comedy God is associated with light. Hell is consistently dark, and Heaven will be eternally light. But here in Purgatory, as on earth, light and dark alternate. If God is in fact symbolized by the sun, as Virgil implies in line 26 when he calls God

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“the high Sun you seek,” then the allegorical point of this law must be that without the grace of God, the soul cannot engage in true penance or progress toward salvation. One can, however, backslide—go down the mountain—at any time. When Sordello guides the poets to the edge of the Valley of Princes, they hear the souls in the valley singing the well-known antiphon Salve Regina (“Hail, Queen”). This is traditionally a hymn for compline (the service performed at dusk or immediately after dusk). Therefore it is appropriate that the souls sing it at this particular time, and in doing so this community of faithful souls aligns itself with the community of the living church in the world, which would sing the identical song at dusk in its own hemisphere. In addition the words of the hymn, addressed to the Virgin Mary as our heavenly advocate, reflect the state of the souls in this valley—marked for salvation but not yet able to begin their purgation. Ad te suspiramus (“To you we sigh”), the singers pray to the Virgin, gementes et flentis in hac lacrimarum valle (“groan and weep in this valley of tears”). The eight princes whom Sordello points out to the pilgrims are all important European leaders from the mid- to late 13th century, some of whom the poet Sordello would have known (he had been in the retinue of Charles of Anjou, for example, when Charles marched against Manfred). The pairings and positions of the princes are suggestive and sometimes ironic: The Emperor, Rudolph of Hapsburg, sits higher than anyone else and is comforted by Ottakar II of Bohemia, his greatest enemy in life. The “snubnosed one,” Philip III (“the Bold”) of France, laments with the “kind-looking” one, Henry (“the Fat”) of Navarre, over the evil done by Philip’s son (who is Henry’s son-in-law), France’s Philip IV. The one with the “big nose” (Charles of Anjou) is singing with the “sturdy looking” one (Pedro III of Aragon), who in life took over Charles’s kingdom of Sicily. Henry III of England—whom Sordello had castigated in his poem on Blacatz—sits alone (probably because, of all the princes named, he is the only one not involved in the Holy Roman Empire), and William VII sits lower than the rest—as a marquis, he was lower in rank than the others.

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Commentators have generally seen these rulers as “negligent” in the sense that they were too preoccupied with political events to focus on the spiritual and are therefore placed among the late repentant. However since their worldly responsibilities were divinely ordained (since they ruled by the will of God), their late repentance was mitigated somewhat, and they are placed higher on the mountain than their late-repentant subjects. But there are difficulties with this reading: England’s Henry III, for example, was known as a pious but weak king (in his poem to Blacatz Sordello berates Henry for having little courage and for losing his lands to the king of France). Clearly Henry’s failing was neglect of his secular responsibilities, not his spiritual ones. Here Dante also has Sordello complain—echoing Dante’s own political tirade of the previous canto—that the Emperor Rudolph could have cured the ills of Italy if he had wished. Thus the negligent rulers might be negligent in different senses. In all cases rulers have the Godgiven responsibility of securing and maintaining the welfare of the commonwealth as well as their own souls. Being neglectful of either of these duties will bar a prince from immediate entry into Purgatory and land him in this valley. The compline hymn Te lucis ante would have been very familiar in Dante’s time, and Dante would have expected his readers to be thinking of the entire hymn: The prayer asks for God’s protection during the night, to shield us from evil or sinful dreams and to restrain our enemy (Hostemque nostrum comprime). This latter line is especially relevant to the situation of this canto, for the “enemy” will soon appear in the form of a serpent, which God’s angels will frighten off. The hymn, as the earlier Salve Regina, reflects the daily life of Christians on earth—having the opening lines sung by a single voice, later joined by all of the others, imitates the practice of a monastic service. But the hymn is really not relevant to the situation of the souls in the Valley of Princes: they cannot sleep (we are about to discover); nor can they be tempted (since they are already saved). Yet the entire group, including the pilgrim Dante, stands enraptured by the music. The scene recalls the pilgrim’s reaction to Casella’s song in Canto 2, but here the response

is much more appropriate. Dante the poet evokes the emotional power of music but also contrasts the “old song” (the music of the flesh) with the “new song” (the music of the spirit). The souls’ saved condition may explain their reaction to the angelic drama that is played out before them in this canto. The pilgrim Dante is frightened at the approach of the serpent and fascinated by the angels’ repulsion of the adversary. But the souls of the valley seem to pay no attention, and Corrado Malaspina, apparently indifferent to the action around him, never takes his eyes off Dante during the entire scene (ll. 109–111). Perhaps this indifference is the result of their witnessing the same scene every night. Or perhaps it is simply that the battle against the serpent has already been fought and won by Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection; therefore the outcome of this reenactment is a foregone conclusion. Perhaps it is a reflection of the fact that the souls are already saved and therefore are in no danger from the fiend. If that is the case, though, why should God continue to send the angels every night? The answer seems to lie in the souls’ earlier spellbound attention to the song, anticipating the angels’ arrival: That moment, as Musa says in his edition, is for the onlookers “a never-failing sign of God’s grace” (Purgatory 93). Once it is over, the defeat of the serpent is taken for granted. The scene enacted by the angels and the serpent is, however, especially significant for the reader. Dante makes this clear by addressing the reader directly (the first of seven such apostrophes in the course of the Purgatorio), drawing attention to the veiled or allegorical meaning of the narrative to come. Everything about the angelic episode seems to be symbolic: The angels recall the cherubim of Genesis 3.24, who bar all access to Paradise and the Tree of Life. Their swords are blunted, perhaps as a sign that God’s justice has been tempered with his mercy, because Christ has now opened Paradise, or perhaps because they are not really needed against the serpent, who has already been vanquished. The serpent is the tempter of Eve, and the angels are said to be sent from the bosom of Mary—the Virgin in medieval theology had specifically annulled the sin of Eve. The angels are green, the color of hope,

Purgatorio suggesting the souls’ hope of Heaven soon to be realized. These relations are part of the typological meaning of the passage. But recalling the four levels of allegory on which the Comedy functions, it may be the moral level Dante is most interested in here. His address to the reader to look beneath the veil (l. 19) calls to mind the similar warning he gave in Canto 9 of the Inferno—the canto exactly parallel to this one in the first canticle (considering the Inferno’s Canto 1 as an introduction to the Comedy as a whole). In the Inferno the warning occurs as Dante and Virgil wait outside the gates of Dis, stymied by the rebel angels, who call forth MEDUSA to turn Dante to stone—until the angel arrives from Heaven and opens the gate. In the current canto the serpent threatens to enter the garden, frightening Dante, until the two angels descend and drive off the enemy. Again Mark Musa’s explanation of these parallel scenes makes the most sense: Dante is utilizing the medieval tradition of the “three advents of Christ.” The first advent—his incarnation, passion, and crucifixion—culminates in the Harrowing of Hell, an event allegorically recreated by the angel’s entrance into Hell in Canto 9 of the Inferno. The second advent of Christ—that which suggests moral allegory—is his daily incarnation in the hearts of individual Christians, for the purpose of protecting them from temptation. This daily advent is reenacted here in Canto 8 of the Purgatorio. The third advent of Christ—his coming in glory to judge the living and the dead—seems allegorically represented in Canto 30 of the Purgatorio, when Beatrice descends to judge the pilgrim in the Earthly Paradise. Two other points in Canto 8 are particularly worth noting. The first is the commentary on Nino Visconti’s wife. Nino chides his widow for her willingness to remarry, implying that she will live to regret her decision, and the pilgrim Dante seems to concur that Nino’s wife should have remained unmarried. These sentiments are influenced chiefly by the medieval attitude that women remarried because they could not keep in check their lustful natures. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, with her five marriages, was for some a monster of self-indulgence. But unless this discussion is simply a digression, it

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seems that Dante may intend an allegorical interpretation of this passage: Nino’s complaint may recall that of the prophet Hosea, who takes a whore for a wife. The unfaithful wife is compared to Israel forsaking the Lord, but the lord ultimately takes Israel back after chastising her. Similarly Nino’s wife may suggest, on one level, the church (particularly under popes like Boniface) whoring after riches and secular power, which must be cleansed and restored to its true dedication to God; or on another level the human soul, which may turn from God—as the souls in Ante-Purgatory have done— but is accepted and loved by God when it turns back to him, even if that occurs, as with many of these souls, at the very last minute. The other point to note is Dante’s view of the stars. He now sees three bright stars above the South Pole. In the morning he had seen four different stars. Commentators agree that the four stars represent the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance), and the three stars here suggest the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity). The cardinal virtues may be acquired by human beings and even become habitual (as Dante suggests they are in the Malaspina family later in this canto, ll. 130–132), and hence are attainable by all people, Christian or pagan. But the theological virtues can only be attained through divine grace, and it is only through them that the human will is directed toward God. It is appropriate that the theological virtues appear to the pilgrim here, as he is about to enter the gate into Purgatory proper and the path toward God. He leaves behind the more worldly atmosphere of Ante-Purgatory, where, as in the world itself, the cardinal virtues are more prominent. In Canto 29 the seven virtues appear together in the great pageant that accompanies Beatrice’s descent to the Earthly Paradise—though they appear not as stars but as dancing heavenly ladies (29, ll. 121–132). Like Canto 9 in the Inferno (where Dante and Virgil enter the city of Dis), the Purgatorio’s ninth Canto is a transitional one, in which Dante crosses the boundary from Ante-Purgatory into Purgatory proper. As in the Inferno this is a complex canto in which the narrator feels the need to draw the

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reader’s attention to the allegorical complexity of his narrative (ll. 70–72). Dante will spend three nights on Mount Purgatory, each of which will end with a prophetic dream just before dawn. The first half of this Canto concerns the pilgrim’s first dream and its accompanying classical allusions, all of which have proved to be exceptionally controversial. Briefly the dream occurs near dawn—a time when, according to medieval tradition, dreams are most likely to have prophetic power. Leading into his account of the dream, Dante establishes the time by two classical allusions with sensual and violent overtones: Aurora, goddess of dawn, rises from the bed of her aging human lover, the Trojan prince Tithonus. Near dawn the swallow sings her sad song, recalling the history of Philomela, who was raped by Tereus (her sister Procne’s husband) and (in the version Dante knew) later transmuted into a swallow. At this point Dante dreams of his violent seizure by the heavenly eagle and rapid ascent into the sphere of fire, where he begins to burn and awakens in fright, an episode Dante likens to Jove’s rape of Ganymede in the form of an eagle. On one level the dream is the pilgrim’s unconscious transformation of the experience his sleeping body is actually undergoing—SAINT LUCY is carrying him up the mountain to the gate of Purgatory. The dream also looks forward to events that will happen further on—principally the wall of fire through which the pilgrim will have to pass to enter the Earthly Paradise in Canto 27. There, as here, the pilgrim will shrink back in fear. The eagle clearly suggests divine power, and commentators have suggested that it represents grace, specifically the illuminating grace symbolized by Saint Lucy (the grace that helps move the pilgrim ahead in his journey). After all the eagle in the dream does symbolize Lucy, and the eagle of Jove that it recalls for the pilgrim did carry Ganymede into the presence of the gods. More recent commentators have seen the eagle as a symbol of the empire, a function eagles have at other points in the Comedy (most notably in Canto 18 of the Paradiso). Thus the dream might suggest that Dante has been specially chosen to proclaim the important role of the empire in God’s universal plan. But that

interpretation seems a stretch considering the context of the dream. What many commentators fail to mention is the sexual nature of the vision. The images of sensuality and of violent rape that surround the dream contrast sharply with the tender maternal “reality” of Saint Lucy’s benevolent transportation of the pilgrim to the gates of Purgatory. Yet the Te lucis ante hymn sung by the shades in Canto 8 contained a specific petition for protection from wicked dreams. Surely the suggestive imagery in this dream is no accident. One interpretation of this sensuality is that it portrays the pilgrim as still burdened by the sinful nature of his flesh and needing the purification that Purgatory will provide. Further the frightening nightmare manifests the unconscious fears that the pilgrim is experiencing on this journey— fears that stem from his human nature. The narrator’s aforementioned address to the reader (ll. 70–72) seems to draw special attention to the allegorical meaning of the gate into Purgatory, particularly its guardian angel with sword and keys and the steps that lead up to the gate. The angel with the naked sword recalls, once again, the cherubim guarding the gates of Paradise in Genesis 3.24. The ashen color of the angel’s robes is traditionally associated with humility and with contrition. It also suggests Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season of penance in preparation for Easter. When the angel accosts Dante and asks, “Where is your guide?” (l. 86) he seems to parallel the previous guardian figure of Cato, who in Canto 1 had asked the pilgrim, “Who guided you?” (l. 43). When the angel follows this with the warning to Dante “Beware, you may regret your coming here” (l. 87), it may recall Minos’s warning “Be careful how you enter and whom you trust: / it is easy to get in, but don’t be fooled!” (Inferno 5, ll. 19–20). These parallels with previous liminal figures serve to define this angel as marking an important threshold Dante is about to cross. As for the three steps leading to the gate scholars are agreed that they symbolize the three stages of the sacrament of penance: Catholic theology defines these steps as contrition of the heart (the recognition and genuine rejection of sin), confession of the mouth (the expression of remorse made

Purgatorio    115 to a priest), and satisfaction (the promise of an act of penance to be performed, in order to demonstrate the sincerity of the contrition). These steps should culminate in absolution by the priest, who grants forgiveness conditional upon the performance of the penance. There is some disagreement as to which of Dante’s steps correspond to which specific stage of the sacrament. The first step—polished white marble—forms a mirror for the sinner’s self-examination. This could imply the recognition of sin that characterizes contrition, though some scholars believe it symbolizes the self-revelation of confession. The second step, crumbling and nearly black, might suggest the emotional trauma brought on by a true confession, or it might indicate the sinner’s recognition of his own inner brokenness that is sincere contrition. All are agreed that the bloodred third step represents satisfaction by works: The red recalls Christ’s sacrifice, an act of charity that provided satisfaction for all the sins of the world. Since penitential acts are meant to be acts of charity, the third step in the sacrament imitates the sacrifice of Christ. As for whether Dante means for the order of the steps to be contrition, confession, and satisfaction, or confession, contrition, and satisfaction, it might be worth asking why Dante would change the traditional order of the sacrament. For some the altered order reflects Dante’s penance before Beatrice in Canto 31, which begins with his confession and moves into contrition. But a close reading of that canto seems to indicate that the pilgrim is feeling deep contrition before the confession of his lips. I would suggest that there is no particular reason to see Dante’s steps as unorthodox. On the colors of the step, Robert Durling (in his Oxford edition of the poem) sees the sequence of white, black, and red as a brief synopsis of Christian salvation history: from the white of innocence, to the black of sin, to the red of Christ’s redemption. The guardian angel becomes an ecclesiastical figure in this allegory of penance. He is keeper of the keys, which he says he received from Saint Peter. These are the keys of Matthew 16.18–19 that symbolize the authority granted to the church to open or close the Kingdom of Heaven. The silver key is usually taken to denote the priest’s

The Portals of Purgatory, from Canto 9 of the Purgatorio, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

discretionary judgment as to whether or not the penitent deserves absolution. The gold key represents the actual power to absolve. Both keys—one used after the other—are necessary to open the door to salvation. The seven p’s on the pilgrim’s brow stand for peccatum, the Latin word for “sin.” These are the seven deadly sins to which all Adam’s descendants are predisposed. In a chiefly moral allegory the angel as priest imposes on Dante the penance of going through the different terraces on the mountain, where he will be cleansed of each sin, one after the other. On each terrace he will be able to wash away one of the marks on his forehead. The canto ends, and the new stage of Dante’s journey begins, with the mysterious sound of the Te Deum laudamus: This ancient hymn, one of the oldest in the Christian Church, was attributed to Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, who were said

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to have sung it spontaneously on the occasion of Augustine’s baptism. In any case it probably dates from the fifth century. It is a song of thanksgiving celebrating the Trinity and was regularly sung on the occasion of a man’s entry into a religious order—thus it was traditionally a hymn marking a major spiritual transition. The line in the hymn most appropriate to the current occasion is the one that reads, Tu, devicto mortis aculeo, aperuisti credentibus regna caelorum (“When you overcame the sting of death, you opened for believers the Kingdom of Heaven”), the kingdom into which the pilgrim now passes.

LOWER PURGATORY (LOVE PERVERTED) (CANTOS 10–17) Synopsis Having passed through the gate into Purgatory, Dante hears the creaking door close behind him. Remembering the angel’s warning, he does not look back. He and Virgil begin a zigzagging climb through a steep and narrow passageway that Dante compares to the eye of a needle. When the poets finally reach a ledge, Dante must stop to rest, and neither of the pilgrims knows which way to go. Dante soon realizes that this first wide terrace is decorated with wondrous carvings in the white marble of the cliff face that constitutes the inner wall of the ledge. Created by the hand of God, the carvings outdo those of the great classical sculptor Polyclete—or even the works of Nature herself. There are three great carvings, each an example of the virtue of humility. The first depicts the annunciation, with the angel greeting Mary and the Virgin responding that she is the handmaid of God. The second scene, from the Old Testament book of Samuel, depicts King David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant (and his proud wife, Michal, looking on with disdain from above). The third scene provides a classical example: The Roman emperor Trajan, leading his army, is stopped by a grieving widow who begs for justice for her murdered son. According to the legend Trajan recognized his responsibility to the widow and saw justice done before he left. Dante alludes as well to the intercession of GREGORY THE GREAT (POPE GREGORY I)—the pope’s prayer that, according to legend,

saved Trajan from Hell despite the emperor’s never having been baptized. As the pilgrim stands gazing at the stone carvings, Virgil draws his attention to a large group of souls approaching and suggests that perhaps this group can tell them how to move up to the next level. But before Dante describes these penitents, he addresses his readers: Do not abandon your repentance when you see the penance God demands, he tells his audience. Think not about the punishment but about the eternal blessing to which it leads. The narrator moves into an apostrophe to prideful Christians, reminding them that they are no more than worms. Then he describes the prideful: They are bent over and carry large boulders on their backs—the weight of the boulders varies, apparently according to the degree of the penitent’s guilt. But the souls under the weights seem scarcely able to go on. Canto 11 opens with the Lord’s Prayer as spoken by the souls of the proud. It expands on the words of the prayer, devoting roughly a tercet to each petition. The prayer moves through the petition to avoid temptation and “deliver us from him who urges evil” (l. 21) but then concludes with a clarification that this last request is made for those still in the world, rather than for themselves, since in Purgatory these souls are beyond temptation or evil. Dante observes that just as these souls pray for us on earth, we the living could do much good by praying for them in turn. Virgil addresses the encumbered souls moving slowly around this first round, asking them where to find the easiest way up the mountain—since, as he says, the pilgrim he is traveling with is still encumbered by the flesh of Adam. A voice from one of the downturned faces answers that there is an opening in the rock coming up on the right by which a living soul may ascend. The voice adds that if it were possible, he would lift his head from beneath the great weight he bears to see whether he recognizes the living man standing before him. He identifies himself as OMBERTO ALDOBRANDESCO and admits how in life he held all people in disdain. This kind of arrogance, he admits, has ruined his entire house, and now he is bearing the weight (humility) that he refused to accept in life. He will continue to do so, he says, until God is satisfied.

Purgatorio    117 Dante, who has been moving with the burdened souls, is bent over far enough to recognize the face of one of the other souls: It is Oderisi of Gubbio, a famous illuminator of manuscripts in Dante’s time. Oderisi, full of vanity in life, now admits that another painter, Franco Bolognese, is his superior and goes on to deliver a sustained meditation on earthly fame. Giovanni Cimabue (Cenni de Pepo), he says, was once the greatest painter but now has been surpassed by Giotto di Bondone. In poetry one Guido (Cavalcanti) has replaced another (Guinizelli), says Oderisi, and one is already living who will replace them both (presumably Dante himself). Fame is like the wind, and in time no one will remember whether you accomplished great things or died in your cradle. Oderisi then points to another of the burdened souls walking with them as an example of the transience of fame: Provenzan Salvani, the arrogant Ghibelline leader of Siena, once known throughout Tuscany but now hardly remembered even in Siena. The pilgrim is surprised to find Salvani here, rather than among the late-repentant sinners (assuming he repented late, Provenzan should have been delayed in Ante-Purgatory for at least the equivalent of his natural life, as Belacqua explains in Canto 4). Oderisi explains that at the height of his power Salvani humbled himself by begging in the marketplace of Siena in order to ransom a friend. This humility has brought the haughty Salvani to this point faster than expected. As for Dante himself Oderisi issues an obscure prophecy that Dante’s neighbors will soon show him what it means to be humbled. Dante moves along in the position of the humbled, bent over and speaking to Oderisi, until as Canto 12 opens Virgil calls to him to straighten up and move ahead. Before they leave the terrace of the proud, however, his guide tells the pilgrim to look down again. In the stone beneath his feet like tombs in the floor of a church are a series of carved representations of the proud being humbled. Here among other images both biblical and classical are portrayed the fall of Lucifer, the giant Briareus struck by Jove’s thunderbolt and in another panel other giants who warred on Olympus, Nimrod stunned at the tower of Babel, Niobe grieving for

her children, Saul dead on Mount Gilboa, Arachne turned to a spider, Rehoboam fleeing in his chariot, Eriphyle slain by her son for betraying her husband, Cyrus of Persia defeated by Tomyris, Sennacherib murdered by his sons, Holofernes’ death at the hands of Judith, and finally the fall of Troy. Virgil rouses Dante from his contemplation of these images, telling him that the sixth hour of the day (noon) has arrived and pointing out that the angel of humility is approaching. He instructs Dante to give the angel due reverence. The angel, with radiant face, opens his wings and with words of encouragement shows Dante and Virgil the path to the next level. As he is about to begin this path, the angel lightly brushes his wings against Dante’s brow, and as the two poets start to climb up, they hear chanted the beatitude “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

The Prideful—Oderisi, from Canto 12 of the Purgatorio, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

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As they climb the step to the next level, Dante comments that he feels lighter than when he climbed earlier to the terrace of pride. Virgil explains that since the angel has removed one of the p’s from his forehead, Dante is in fact lighter— and that when all the p’s have been removed, he will feel no weight at all. Dante reaches up to feel his brow and counts only six remaining marks. At this Virgil smiles. As Canto 13 opens, the poets reach the second terrace of the mountain. Here there are no carvings in the cliff or the path but only the bare blue-black rock face. Finding no spirits from whom to ask the way, Virgil says a brief prayer to the sunlight for guidance and then moves off with his charge. They have gone about a mile along the path when they begin to hear voices whispering to them the three examples of charity. The first of these, as usual, is from the life of the Virgin: It is the Latin sentence “They have no wine,” the words Mary spoke to Christ at the wedding feast of Cana (John 2.1–10), where she convinced him to turn water into wine for the wedding party. The second whispered words are “I am Orestes”—a classical example of words spoken by Pylades as he tried to save his friend Orestes from execution for the murder of Orestes’ mother, Clytemnestra. As the pilgrim turns to Virgil to ask what these voices are, he hears the commandment “Love your enemy.” Virgil responds that these are the examples—what he calls the “whip”—that oppose the sin of envy purged on this level. The “curb,” which they will witness later, will show examples of envy itself. Virgil now points ahead to a group of souls huddled against the cliff, covered in cloaks the color of the rock and leaning against one another reciting the Litany of the Saints. As Dante approaches the shades of the envious, he feels pity for them: They are clothed in rough haircloth like beggars, and Dante notes that their eyelids have been sewn shut with iron thread. Dante looks toward Virgil, who reads his thoughts and tells him to speak to one of the souls but to do it quickly. Dante turns to the blinded multitude and asks whether anyone there is Italian. One soul answers him, saying that all on this ledge are citizens of the one true city and suggests

that Dante meant to ask whether anyone here was once a pilgrim passing through Italy. Dante moves ahead to where the voice came from and sees one of the blind shades looking up expectantly. He asks her whether it was she who spoke, and she replies that she was once SAPIA OF SIENA (the aunt of Provenzan Salvani). Sapia tells the pilgrim her story: She was one, she says, who took more pleasure in the misfortunes of others than in her own happiness. She prayed for the defeat of the Sienese and her nephew Provenzan at the Battle of Colle and rejoiced when that defeat occurred. She says that she repented on her deathbed but that the prayers of the good Franciscan Pier Pettinaio allowed her to travel so quickly to this ledge. Sapia now asks Dante who he is, and he replies that he is a living man who will one day travel to this terrace. But the pilgrim says he does not expect to be long on the ledge of envy; his real fear is bearing his burden on the terrace of pride below. He offers to do something for her when he returns to the mortal world, and Sapia, moved by the abundant grace she recognizes Dante has received to make this journey, asks him to pray for her and to remember her to her kinsmen in Siena. Canto 14 opens with the conversation of two blind spirits crouching along the cliff face, excited by the unprecedented arrival of a living person on their level of Purgatory. As Dante overhears them, one of the souls raises his face and asks the pilgrim who he is and where he is from. Dante responds somewhat indirectly, saying he is from the shores of a river that runs more than 100 miles through Tuscany, from Falterona to the sea. His name, he says humbly, is of no matter, since he is as yet unknown on earth. One of the spirits recognizes the river as the Arno, and the other asks why Dante would conceal the river’s name as if it were shameful. The first spirit answers that the name of the Arno would be better lost, since the inhabitants of its shores are all beastlike men. The people of Casentino are swine, he says, and those of AREZZO snarling dogs that the river itself turns away from. The Florentines are wolves and the Pisans foxes. The wildness of the often-flooding river, says the speaker, reflects the

Purgatorio bestial inhabitants of Tuscany. As he speaks, the spirit has a prophetic vision in which he reveals how his companion spirit’s grandson—Fulcieri da Calboli—will soon dishonorably hunt down and kill the “wolves” of Florence. As Dante looks upon the pale face of the chagrined grandfather, he now asks the two spirits their names, and the speaker identifies himself as GUIDO DEL DUCA (a Ghibelline judge from Bertinoro) and his companion as RINIERI DE’ PAOLUCCI DA CALBOLI (a Guelph leader from Forlì). Guido laments that there is now no one in Rinieri’s family worthy to be that honorable man’s heir. In fact Guido goes on, none of the honorable men of Rinieri’s native Romagna have left worthy heirs. For some 27 lines Guido lists great men of Romagna (generally virtuous men of wealth and political or military power), now dead, and laments the current degeneracy of the entire area, including his hometown of Bertinoro. Guido ends his discourse bidding Dante to move on, saying he would rather weep than say more. As Dante and Virgil leave the souls of the envious behind, a crack like a thunderbolt rips the air, and Dante hears a voice cry, “I shall be slain by all who find me!” (l. 133). It is the voice of Cain, who murdered his brother out of envy and must suffer the consequences (Genesis 4.8–16). This is followed by the thunderous roar of another voice, this one saying, “I am Aglauros, who was turned to stone!” (l. 139). Aglauros, a princess of Athens, envied her sister’s love affair with the god Mercury and as a result was turned to stone (Metamorphoses 2.737–832). Dante turns to Virgil, who tells him this is the curb (or “rein”) of envy—examples of envy punished. Virgil ends the canto with a lament of his own (not unlike those of Guido del Duca earlier in the canto), this time for human beings in general who fail to learn to shun sin from the negative examples they see around them daily or to be inspired to love virtue by the beauty of God’s heavens. Canto 15 opens with a convoluted reference to the turning of the sphere of the Sun, indicating that it is currently 3:00 P.M. in Purgatory, and the pilgrim indicates that he and Virgil are walking westward toward the sun. Suddenly a light brighter

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than the sun forces him to shade his eyes with his hands, and Dante explains this with a complex description of how a ray of light is reflected—in this case directly into his eyes. The pilgrim asks Virgil what this light is that seems to be moving toward them, and the Roman poet answers that it is the angel come to show them the way to the next level. Before long, Virgil adds, such sights will not be so difficult for Dante’s eyes to withstand. Now standing before the angel, the poets are ushered to a stairway somewhat easier than the last, and as they begin climbing they hear behind them another beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful” (Matthew 5.7). (No beatitude specifically refers to charity, but mercy implies compassion for others, which does directly oppose the hatred of invidia.) As they climb, Dante asks Virgil about something that Guido del Duca had said to them: chastising his and others’ envy in an apostrophe to all mankind, Guido had asked why human beings “place your hopes/where partnership must always be denied?” (Canto 14, ll. 86–87). Virgil explains that Guido was referring to the human desire for things of this world, which cannot be shared because they are finite. If our love were for the things of Heaven, then we would have no such fear, for the more of us there are who possess heavenly treasure, the more there is to share. Dante cannot understand how something can become more plentiful the more it is shared, and Virgil responds that heavenly love is infinite and like a mirror reflecting light gives back to us as much as we give. If this explanation still does not satisfy him, Virgil says, Beatrice will answer all the pilgrim’s questions when he sees her. He urges Dante now to erase the five remaining wounds from his forehead as quickly as possible. By now the poets have arrived on the third terrace. Suddenly Dante is overpowered by a mystical vision of a crowded temple and the Virgin Mary whispering to the young Jesus that he has caused her and Joseph much worry. The second vision is of the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, soothing his wife’s anger as she tries to convince him to have their daughter’s suitor killed. The third vision shows Dante the stoning of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who prays to God to forgive his executioners.

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As Dante emerges from his trance, Virgil asks what ails him, since he has been walking as if halfasleep for half a league. Dante answers that he will tell Virgil all that he has seen, but Virgil responds that he can easily read Dante’s mind and tells him that these visions were shown him to set his heart on peace. Virgil says that his reason for asking Dante what was wrong was to spur him on to move more quickly. Now the poets walk toward the setting sun, when suddenly they are shrouded in a thick black cloud of smoke. As Canto 16 opens, the pilgrim is choked and blinded by the heavy, acrid smoke of this terrace, and he holds on to Virgil’s shoulder for support as the Roman leads the way along the ledge. As they move along, Dante hears the souls of the wrathful singing the Agnus Dei, the litany to the Lamb of God. The voices sing in perfect harmony, in contrast to the sharp divisions their wrath caused in life. One of these souls calls out to Dante, asking who he is, since he speaks as if he were still alive. With Virgil’s encouragement the pilgrim invites this soul to walk with them, and the speaker agrees to move as far as he is allowed along the terrace. As they walk, Dante tells this new soul how God’s grace has enabled him while yet alive to climb through Hell and Purgatory to Heaven. The pilgrim then asks his new acquaintance his name and the way to the next circle. The shade responds that he is Marco Lombardo and that the poets are on the correct path to the next terrace. He then asks that Dante pray for him when the pilgrim has reached Heaven. Marco adds that in life he loved the good, lamenting that nowadays men no longer seek goodness. To this Dante reacts, asking Marco his opinion as to why virtue seems unknown in the contemporary world. Are the evil characters of men determined by the stars, Dante asks, or is there another cause? Sighing, Marco responds that the influence of the stars gives people certain tendencies but that all have free will and all have a mind given them by God to resist any malicious influence of the spheres. If the world has grown evil, Marco says, it is solely the fault of humans themselves. The human soul is born pure and loves all God’s creation but needs

guidance in the form of laws to channel that love in the right direction. At one time, Marco says, Rome provided such guidance in the form of two suns, one to light the physical world and one the spiritual world. But now the Roman leader desires to control both the temporal and the spiritual lives, and that usurpation of power has resulted in bad government and the contemporary degenerate state of Christian society. The church has thus defiled itself and deserted its ordained function. Marco mentions three men—Currado da Palazzo, Guido da Castel, and the good Gherardo—who embody the old virtues, and when Dante asks who this Gherardo is, Marco responds with surprise, assuming that everyone in Tuscany must know Gherardo, the father of Gaia. At that point the light of God’s angel begins to penetrate the smoke, and Marco must turn back. Following Virgil, the pilgrim Dante finally emerges from the dark smoke as Canto 17 begins. But even as he does so, his mind becomes oblivious to the outside world and glimpses three more visions, this time the examples of wrath punished. The first of these is the classical figure of Procne, who, enraged when her husband raped her sister, killed their son and fed him to his father—after which she was transformed into a nightingale. In the second vision the pilgrim sees the crucified figure of Haman, the Persian minister who attempted to persuade King Ahasuerus to condemn to death all the Jews in the kingdom. Finally Dante sees an example from Virgil’s Aeneid: Queen Amata, who wanted Turnus to kill Aeneas and marry her daughter and who ultimately committed suicide when she heard a mistaken report that Turnus had been killed in battle. Dante is drawn out of his trance by the bright light of the Angel of Peace, who shows the pilgrims the way to ascend to the next level. Virgil urges Dante to move quickly, since the sun is setting and the pilgrims cannot travel on the mountain at night. As they begin their ascent, Dante feels the angel’s wing erase another mark from his forehead and hears the words of the beatitude “Blessed are the peacemakers.” While Dante climbs and night begins to descend, the pilgrim feels his strength slip away, until he is immobilized by exhaustion as

Purgatorio he reaches the fourth terrace. He turns to Virgil to ask what sin is purged on this level, and his guide responds that this is the terrace of sloth. Since the poets are delayed on this ledge, Virgil decides to expand his explanation of this terrace by giving Dante a detailed lecture on the nature of love and the human will. Love may be natural or intellectual, Virgil says, and while natural love can never err, intellectual love may choose an evil goal or may pursue a good goal with too much (or too little) enthusiasm. Loving evil may consist of desiring one’s neighbor’s fall from power or loss of goods, or wishing to do harm to one’s neighbor (these result in the sins of pride, envy, and wrath). One may love the good, however, without much zeal (in which case the soul is purged on this terrace of sloth), or one may pursue transient goods with too much passion (resulting in the sins purged on the three terraces above this one). Commentary Canto 10 opens with a difficult line, as Dante passes through the gate that is “forever closed to souls whose loves are bad” (l. 2). In Dante’s view all human actions are motivated by love. Evil deeds arise from a love that is defective or perverted, while virtuous deeds are motivated by love that is in accord with the divine love that holds all the universe in harmony. Virgil will discuss this idea at length in Canto 17. However, the whole of Dante’s Purgatory is structured on the idea of reeducating or reforming the will, so that the penitents’ love is redirected to conform to the love of God. In Purgatory this reeducation will take two forms: In a process based on Aristotle, Dante presents the breaking of the old habits of the will through penance, and the institution of new habits through the meditation on and emulation of positive examples. Thus each section or terrace of Purgatory begins with the presentation (in a variety of forms) of examples of virtue in action, the virtue directly opposed to the vice being purged on that terrace (in this case, humility). There are generally three examples, the first of which is always taken from the life of the Virgin Mary. These examples are followed by the description of sinners doing penance for the vice repented (here, the sin of pride), and finally by more examples, this time of

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the dire consequences resulting from this particular sin. Finally a guardian angel for each terrace will, with his wing, erase one of the p’s from the pilgrim’s forehead, and as the pilgrim passes to the next level he will hear chanted one of the beatitudes from Matthew 6.1–11. In Canto 10 the pilgrim sees the three examples of humility carved into the white marble on the side of the cliff. The first of these represents the annunciation by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she has been chosen to bear the Son of God and her humble reaction giving her complete assent to the will of God (Luke 1. 26–38). In the second example King David abandons the trappings of royalty to dance in a spirit of adoration and humility before the Ark of the Covenant, which is being transported to Jerusalem from the house of Abinidab (2 Samuel 6.1–7). This David exemplum also contains two illustrations of pride in contrast with David’s humility: One of these is the figure of Uzzah, who put out his hand to steady the ark and was struck dead—an exemplum of presumption for daring to touch the ark of the Lord with unsanctified hands. The other is David’s wife, Michal, who looks down on the scene with disdain at David’s undignified behavior (for which she was cursed with barrenness)—an exemplum of arrogance and vanity. The final example of humility is taken from the story of the Roman emperor Trajan, wherein the emperor is accosted by a grieving widow as he is about to ride out with his cavalry. In a display of compassionate humility Trajan suspends his cavalry progress in order to ensure that the widow’s grievance is dealt with justly. This anecdote was available to Dante in various versions of the legend of Saint Gregory the Great. According to a popular medieval legend to which Dante alludes in line 75, Pope Gregory was so moved by stories of the pagan Trajan’s charity that he prayed fervently for the emperor to be restored to life in order to accept God’s saving grace. This intercession of Gregory will be referenced again when Dante sees the redeemed Trajan himself in Canto 20 of the Paradiso, in the heaven of the just, where with King David and four other sovereigns (Constantine, William II of Sicily, Hezekiah, and the Trojan

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RIPHEUS) he forms the eye of the imperial eagle (Paradiso 20, ll. 43–48). These carvings form the positive examples intended to help the will turn to appropriate forms of love. But penance is also needed to turn the will away from sin, the inappropriate sort of love. As we see at the end of this canto, the penance for the sin of pride is to be bent over with the weight of a huge stone, which one must carry until the sin is purged. Since such penance bears a striking resemblance to the contrapasso of the Inferno, the narrator reassures his readers that such penance is cleansing and corrective rather than punitive, and that even in the worst case it is not perpetual but ends with judgment day—which will be a day of blessing, since all in Purgatory are saved. The narrator’s final apostrophe is addressed to “haughty Christians” (and therefore probably including, all his readers). You must understand that you are only a worm, he tells the reader—and the prideful, weighted down and bent toward the earth, are learning that lesson. Ultimately, however, God intends the soul to fly to him like a butterfly. In this image—of the worm becoming the butterfly—Dante encapsulates the theme of metamorphosis that is the central action of the Purgatorio: the transformation of sinful human souls into perfected beings worthy of Paradise. The penitents on each terrace of Purgatory say a unison prayer appropriate to the sin being purged on that level. As Canto 11 opens, the souls of the prideful recite a somewhat expanded version of the Lord’s Prayer. Saint Augustine, the chief authority on the Lord’s Prayer throughout the Middle Ages, had cited this prayer specifically as an antidote to pride. In De sermone Domini 2.16 Augustine says that the very phrase “Our Father” implies a brotherhood of all Christians, making it impossible for the rich or powerful to feel any superiority to their fellows. Dante’s version is an amalgam of Matthew 6.9–13 and Luke 11.2–4, but he inserts additions to the original petitions of the prayer that make it even more fitting for souls emulating humility. When they say, “Thy kingdom come,” for example, the penitents add, “We of ourselves cannot / attain to it, no matter how we strive” (ll. 8–9). When they say, “Forgive us our trespasses,” they add, “Look

not upon our undeserving worth” (l. 18). Further it has been shown that in lines 4–6, when Dante adds the lines “hallowed be thy Power, / by Thy creatures as it behooves us all / to render thanks for Thy sweet effluence,” he is in fact quoting the refrain from Saint Francis’s Laudes creaturarum (“Canticle of the Sun”)—and thus alluding to the saint who for the Middle Ages personified humility more than any other. As he will admit later in Canto 13, pride is the sin that most plagues Dante himself. Thus on this terrace (as he will later on the terraces of wrath and lust), the pilgrim clearly participates in the penance: When he listens to the words of Omberto Aldobrandesco, he bends his head low enough to be able to hear Omberto’s words (l. 73), thus adopting the posture of the humbled penitents. Omberto’s final words, revealing that he must stay on this level until God is satisfied, implies that Purgatory is structured in such a way that each soul spends only as much time on a given level as he needs to make satisfaction for the sins of his own life. Therefore some souls, theoretically, would not have to stop at all levels if they had made satisfaction for some sins while they still lived. Thus Dante, for instance, might need to spend time only on the terraces of pride, wrath, and lust. The three examples of pride included in this canto—Omberto, representing pride of birth; Oderisi of Gubbio, representing pride in artistic accomplishment; and Provenzan Salvani, representing pride in political power—are chosen not only because of their appropriateness for this terrace but also because of their resonance with Canto 10 of the Inferno. In that canto Dante and Virgil had just entered the city of Dis, where they encountered the shades of the heretics, including FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI and CAVALCANTE DEI CAVALCANTI. Here Dante and Virgil have just entered Purgatory proper, and at this parallel point in Purgatory Dante includes several thematic echoes of that earlier canto. The haughty Farinata, whose first words to Dante are “And who would your ancestors be?” (Inferno 10, l. 42), prefigures Omberto and Provenzan in his pride of lineage and political power. Like Provenzan, Farinata was one of the chief Ghibelline leaders at Montaperti, but it was

Purgatorio Farinata’s staunch refusal that quelled Provenzan’s plan to raze the city of Florence. And just as Farinata predicts Dante’s exile in the Inferno (10, ll. 80–81), Oderisi, in connection with his allusion to Provenzan’s humble begging in the square of Siena, also predicts that Dante will be humbled by his coming exile (Purgatorio 11, ll. 140–141). Cavalcante provides another connection between Inferno 10 and Purgatorio 11: Cavalcante’s pride in his son Guido’s artistic accomplishments prefigures Oderisi’s pride in his own artistic reputation. Significantly the figure of GUIDO CAVALCANTI is at the center of both passages. In the Inferno Cavalcanti is disappointed to find Dante making the trip through Hell, assuming that if genius were required to make this journey, then Guido ought to be the one making it. Artistic genius is not sufficient, in either canto, to carry the poet to the heights Dante envisions. In the Inferno Dante seems to have surpassed Guido in grace. In the Purgatorio Oderisi speaks of the transitory nature of artistic fame and remarks how, in painting, the fame of Giotto has now supplanted that of Cimabue, just as, in poetry, the reputation of Cavalcanti has obscured that of Guinizelli (one Guido replacing the other). Further, Oderisi adds, one may already be born who will drive both Guidos out of “fame’s nest” (Purgatorio 11, l. 99). Most scholars believe that Dante here refers to himself. Certainly in 1300, the fictional date of the Comedy, Dante’s reputation was not yet the equal of that or the older and better-known Cavalcanti. But by the time these verses were written, with the Inferno already in circulation, Dante’s fame had clearly supplanted Guido’s. It might be argued that such self-praise is directly opposed to the point of this canto—that humility must counter the sin of pride. But Dante’s apparent egoism is appropriate here for two reasons: First, it helps to illustrate Oderisi’s point about the transience of worldly reputation, and therefore it denigrates rather than celebrates the fame that Dante was in fact currently enjoying. Second, it leads into Dante’s revelation of his own weakness for the sin of pride in Canto 13 and underlines the necessity for the purging of that sin that the pilgrim has already demonstrated by his stooping posture earlier in the canto.

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The examples of pride that begin Canto 12 are carved into the stone floor of the terrace, where they can only be seen by the humbled whose heads are bent low with their burdens. Dante describes 13 biblical and classical examples of the disastrous effects of pride, devoting one tercet to each illustration (ll. 25–63). Using a medieval rhetorical trope called anaphora, Dante rhetorically separates these tercets into three groups of four exempla. He begins each of the first four of these tercets with the phrase “I saw” (Vedea in Italian). He then begins the next four tercets with apostrophes to each of the figures represented in those four carvings—“O Niobe,” “O Saul,” “O mad Arachne,” and “O Rehoboam.” He begins the following four tercets with the word Mostrava, meaning “depicted.” Thus the 12 tercets begin with the letters VVVV, OOOO, MMMM. In his 13th stanza, the culminating example of the fall of Troy, the first line begins with Vedea, the second with O, and the third with Mostrava. Clearly Dante intends for the reader to focus his attention on the acrostic VOM, or, since for medieval readers the letters V and U were synonymous, UOM—the Italian word for “man.” The point seems to be that pride, the first of the seven deadly sins and the sin that begets all others (since it was the first sin committed by Lucifer and by Adam), is so pervasive in the human condition that it is virtually synonymous with “man.” The six biblical examples that Dante chooses to include among the exempla of pride were fairly typical for medieval preachers and theologians. As scholars have shown, five of the six are among the first examples of pride given in the Summa de vitiis, a popular Latin handbook of sins composed by the French Dominican William Peraldus in about 1240 (Dante replaces Adam with Nimrod). A close comparison reveals that Dante chose each of his classical examples deliberately to parallel each of his biblical ones. Lucifer is Dante’s first example of pride. He is paired in the following tercet (ll. 28–30) with the giant Briareus—now one of the giants guarding the central well of Hell in Inferno 31. Just as Lucifer rebelled against the power of God himself and was cast into Hell, so Briareus tried to overthrow Jove but was felled with a thunderbolt. In the second

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Arachne, from Canto 12 of the Purgatorio, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

pair of exempla the gods are first shown looking over the carcasses of other unnamed rebel giants— presumably those who stormed Olympus, piling rocks and trees together to scale the fortress of the immortals (ll. 31–33). This scene is paired with the figure of Nimrod (also pictured as a giant in Inferno 31), who was associated with the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11.8–9) and thus with the attempt to build a tower to Heaven. The first four examples are thus all concerned with the kind of hubris that challenges the gods. The next set of exempla begins with Niobe, the wife of Amphion, king of Thebes, who foolishly boasted that because of her seven sons and seven daughters she was superior to Latona, who had only two children—Apollo and Diana. After Apollo had slain all her sons and Diana all her daughters, Niobe was turned to stone, but tears

still flowed ceaselessly from her marble eyes. She is paired with Saul, first king of Israel, who was cast from God’s favor for ignoring his command to slay all the Amalekites. Saul fell on his own sword after his defeat by the Philistines on Mount Gilboa, and in his lament for Saul David asked that no dew or rain would ever fall on Gilboa (2 Samuel 1.21). These two figures seem to be paired purely because of the contrasting ends of their stories: The stone Niobe weeps tears, but Mount Gilboa is never moistened by rain or dew. The next classical example is Arachne, who foolishly challenged Minerva to a weaving contest and produced a tapestry that, though faultless, disparaged the gods. In a rage Minerva tore Arachne’s tapestry to shreds, and when the mortal woman hanged herself in shame after Minerva’s wrath, the goddess saved her and changed her into a spider. Arachne’s biblical counterpart is Rehoboam, the last king of the united Israel, who aroused his people’s rancor by refusing to lighten their taxes. The tribes killed Adoram, Rehoboam’s tax collector, and the panicked Rehoboam fled to Jerusalem in his chariot (1 Kings 12.1–18). This is another odd pairing, though both Arachne and Rehoboam persisted in their foolish obsessions and then both tried to escape the consequences when matters turned against them. But there are other relationships among these second four examples: Both Niobe and Arachne foolishly boasted of their prowess in comparison with two immortals; the first and last kings of Israel showed an unwillingness to listen to others that ultimately destroyed their reigns. All four of these exempla feature foolish mortals whose vanity becomes their downfall. Dante’s next two figures were both killed by their own children as a result of their pride: Eripyle was the wife of Amphiarus, one of the Seven against Thebes. Having foreseen his death at Thebes, Amphiarus hid himself, but for the price of a necklace forged by Vulcan, Eripyle betrayed his hiding place to Polynices. His son, Alcmaeon, ultimately avenged his father by killing his own mother. This exemplum is paired with the figure of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, who in 2 Kings 19 attacks Jerusalem and is defeated by the much smaller force of Hezekiah. When Sennacherib returned to Nineveh, he

Purgatorio was killed by his own sons while worshiping his pagan gods (2 Kings 19. 35–37). The last pair of figures are both haughty military figures ultimately defeated and beheaded by women. Cyrus of Persia had contemptuously killed the son of Tomyris, queen of Scythia. But she subsequently defeated him in battle and had him decapitated. Holofernes was general of the army of Nebuchadnezzar, besieging the Jewish city of Bethulia. Judith was able to charm the general and, when he was off guard, behead him and hang his head from the wall of the city, causing his army to flee in panic. This last group of four exempla seems united by the military theme. The 13th and final example of humbled pride is the city of Troy, whose destruction is carved here in the stone walkway of the terrace. Since medieval lore regarded Troy’s fall as the result of the city’s pride, its burning serves as the climax of the series of illustrations. Thus Dante reminds us that sin is not simply individual—there is also such a thing as corporate sin, for which entire civilizations might be brought low. This is a reminder that becomes more pertinent a bit later in the canto, when Dante ironically refers to Florence as “that so well-governed town” (l. 102). Perhaps the Florentines should remember that towns, too, can be made to suffer for their sins. As the pilgrim leaves the terrace, he hears the words of the first beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5.3): Blessed are the poor in spirit. This specific blessing of the humble is the first of a recurring pattern in the Purgatorio, in which upon leaving each terrace the pilgrim hears the appropriate beatitude—blessing the virtue directly opposed to the sin purged on each level. Though there are generally considered to be eight beatitudes, Dante follows the reasoning of Thomas Aquinas (ST 1.2, q. 69, a. 3 and q. 69, a. 5), who counted seven beatitudes, considering the blessing of those “persecuted for righteousness’ sake” to refer to all seven of the other groups. Further Dante will later divide the beatitude blessing those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” and use it on two different levels, while omitting altogether the beatitude blessing the meek: The virtue of meekness does not directly contrast any of the seven deadly sins.

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Canto 13 takes the pilgrims to the terrace of the envious. The “livid” or blue-black color of the stone here is the color associated with envy: it is the color of a bruise, and the implication is that the hearts of the envious are continually bruised by the good fortune of other people. For Dante and his contemporaries the sin of envy is more serious than it is usually considered today. More than simply the desire to have some good belonging to someone else, envy implied not merely sorrow at another person’s happiness but joy at someone else’s misfortune. Thus in his “Parson’s Tale” (X, 487) Chaucer, for example, calls envy “the worste synne that is,” directly opposed to the Holy Spirit (X, 484). The Latin term invidia, used for “envy,” encompasses not only what we would call envy but also resentment and hatred. Thomas Aquinas argues that “the most grievous sin is opposed to the greatest virtue,” and, because love or charity is the greatest virtue, hatred (invidia) is directly opposed to it, and hence the greatest sin (ST 1.2, q. 73, a. 4). The etymology of invidia (in indicating the negative, videre from the verb “to see”) lies behind the penance of the envious on this ledge: Their eyes are sewn shut, preventing them from seeing at all. Presumably it was through their sight that they sinned, as they coveted the goods they saw others possess or hated those they saw who possessed those goods. Now blind, they cling together as they stand along the cliff wall, supporting and upholding one another as they failed to do in life. Looking on them, the pilgrim Dante feels pity and compassion—displaying here the virtue of charity that the envious must learn. They wear cloaks of penitential haircloth, all of the same color as the rock, symbolizing their envy by their color but also making them indistinguishable from one another. As in life they sought to distinguish themselves from others by raising themselves above or by bringing others down, now they are without distinction and bound together in their sameness. This explains Sapia’s answer when Dante asks whether anyone in the group is Italian: She minimizes any former distinctions based on nationality or race and emphasizes only that all are citizens of the Holy City of God.

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The penance of blindness explains the auditory form that the exempla of charity take in this round. Only a single phrase is whispered to the pilgrims, who are then left to provide the context of each utterance for themselves. The first of these, from the marriage feast at Cana, illustrates first Mary’s generosity in finding that the wedding party has run out of wine and convincing her son to perform his first miracle out of compassion for the bride and groom. Allegorically, however, this example also suggests Christ’s later Crucifixion. The traditional interpretation of this passage was that the water represented the prophecies of the Old Testament and that the wine symbolized the blood of Christ, through which those prophecies were fulfilled. The second example, which Dante probably knew from Cicero’s De amicitia (“On Friendship”), recalls the story of Orestes and his faithful friend Pylades. The tyrant of Tauris sought to kill Orestes for the murder of Orestes’ own mother, Clytemnestra, but he did not know Orestes on sight. Therefore when captured, Pylades claimed to be Orestes to save his friend from execution. This act of generosity recalls, as well, Christ’s words to the apostles in John 15.13: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” The third example of charity is a statement from Christ himself—the exhortation from the Sermon on the Mount to love their enemies. More completely, the appeal reads, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5.43–44). Thus Jesus calls his listeners to a higher righteousness than was practiced before—a righteousness he demonstrated himself when from the cross he prayed for those who crucified him (Luke 23.34). One must not only love others but must love and pray for even one’s enemies. Until the envious can do this, they cannot advance to the next terrace of the mountain. Thus all three of the examples of charity suggest on another level the ultimate act of love, Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. The Eucharistic imagery of the wine at Cana, the allusion to laying down his life in the Orestes example, and the loving words of Christ himself

in the third passage all serve to emphasize how completely the sin of envy contradicts the love of Christ. In lines 37–42 Dante articulates for the only time in the Purgatorio how closely the means of educating the will in Purgatory resembles the training of an animal. In a canto in which the eyelids of the sinners are sewn together like those of a newly captured hawk being broken for training, Virgil uses the terms whip and curb to describe the examples of charity and envy encountered on this terrace. Like a horse in training, the penitents are spurred on to emulate the examples of charity provided here as the “whip.” Later they are restrained by the bridle (or “curb”) of envy in the form of exempla of envy punished. So in each terrace the sinners will be urged (“whipped”) to perform acts of virtue and deterred (“curbed”) from committing acts of sin. As on the terrace of pride the souls of the envious chant a prayer appropriate for their circle. Here (ll. 49–51) the brief prayers Dante hears appealing to the Virgin Mary, Saint Michael, Saint Peter, and all the saints are a part of the Litany of the Saints, most notably recited after the baptisms that occurred during the Easter vigil. Thus the envious invoke the aid of those who were without envy. But most important they ask that the saints pray “for us” (l. 50), a communal prayer rather than a request for any individual. Also as on the previous terrace Dante brings the abstract sin of envy to life by providing a near-contemporary embodiment of the sin in Sapia of Siena. Her close relationship to Provenzan Salvani, whom Dante saw on the ledge of pride, implies the close relationship between the sins of pride and envy— one sin begets the other. Dante’s revelation that he anticipates having to spend a good deal of time on the terrace of pride but not much here on the ledge of envy is therefore an incredibly complex statement: The poet Dante reveals a kind of humility by recognizing that he is most guilty of the sin of pride. But by failing to recognize that envy and pride are closely entwined, the pilgrim Dante reveals that he still possesses a kind of pride, imagining himself to be above envious thoughts. When Dante introduces himself to Guido del Duca in Canto 14, he modestly declines to men-

Purgatorio tion his name, saying that he has as yet achieved no fame in the world, so that his name will mean nothing to Guido. Such humility from the pilgrim seems out of character, but it may be that, as he admitted to Sapia of Siena in the previous canto, he has come to realize that pride is his most characteristic sin and that he has here taken the lesson of the previous terrace to heart. His mention of the River Arno as his home, however, sparks a long diatribe from Guido concerning the bestial nature of the inhabitants on the banks of that river. Before looking at Guido’s unflattering characterizations of the Tuscan cities, it is useful to point out the way in which the discussion of the Arno in the Purgatorio’s 14th canto parallels Virgil’s description of the Old Man of Crete in Canto 14 of the Inferno: All the rivers of Hell had their source in the tears of the Old Man of Crete (see Durling’s edition of the poem, p. 240). As that statue represents the steady decay of human civilization since the Golden Age, so the theme of Guido’s lament—for both Tuscany and Romagna—is the degeneracy of those realms compared with the nobler past. And as the fissure in the statue represents human sin, so that the tears that flow from the fissure form the rivers of Hell, so the Arno flows through a land of moral degeneracy whose inhabitants (as Dante has demonstrated in his Inferno) seem largely destined to spend eternity along those infernal rivers. Like ULYSSES’ men, turned to swine by the sorcery of Circe, all the natives of Tuscany seem to have been turned to beasts. Specifically Casentino is said to be peopled by swine, Arezzo by curs, Florence by wolves, and Pisa by foxes. In this description it seems likely that Dante had in mind a passage from BOETHIUS’s Consolation of Philosophy (Bk. 4, prose 3), wherein Lady Philosophy argues that without goodness human beings lose their humanity: The man who “burns with greed is like a wolf,” she says; while a “wild and restless man who is for ever exercising his tongue” is like “a dog yapping”; one who lies in ambush to entrap another is like a fox; and “a man wallowing in foul and impure lusts is occupied by the filthy pleasures of a sow” (125). Thus Guido suggests that the Pisans are particularly fraudulent, the Florentines avaricious, and so on (see Hollander’s edition, p. 311).

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Guido’s mention of Rinieri’s notorious grandson, Fulcieri da Calboli, serves in part as a transition into Guido’s second lament, this time for his and Rinieri’s native Romagna. It also acts as another prophecy for Dante himself about his native Florence. In the time frame of the narrative it will be two years before Fulcieri becomes podestà of Florence. Fulcieri, brought in by the Black Guelphs who by 1302 controlled the city and engineered Dante’s banishment, was in theory supposed to be an impartial magistrate. Yet his tenure was marked by cruel arrests of leading White Guelphs, as well as the few remaining Ghibelline leaders in Florence, some of whom he tortured to death, some of whom he beheaded, some of whom he sold to the Blacks to be executed. Guido refers to Florence as a “wretched woods” (l. 64) that cannot regenerate itself in 1,000 years. This recalls the Wood of Suicides in Canto 13 of the Inferno, and the unnamed Florentine suicide that seemed a symbol of the city’s destroying itself. (Why Rinieri is not privy to the same foresight as Guido is puzzling: Since Guido claims the knowledge has come to him in a flash of “inspiration” [l. 37], it may be that Dante imagines the foreknowledge of immortal souls as given to them in moments of insight rather than as available to them consistently.) Just as the despotic Fulcieri represents a falling off from his noble grandfather, Rinieri, so the citizens of contemporary Romagna are, in general, poor specimens compared with their noble forebears. Romagna (the area of Italy bordered by the River Po in the north, the Adriatic in the east, the Apennine hills in the south, and the River Reno to the west) has declined so significantly, in Guido’s view, that he finally ends by simply weeping for his homeland—but not before he has lamented its decline for some nine tercets. In the traditional melancholy language of the ubi sunt theme (“Where are they?”) that recalls Sordello’s discourse on the decline of the European monarchy in the Valley of the Princes (in Canto 7), Guido names 10 particular men, three cities, and four families of Romagna, whose descendants or current inhabitants have decayed in recent times. Those named were all leaders renowned for chivalric virtues during the last quarter of the 12th century or the first three-quarters of the 13th. Essentially Dante very deliberately pairs Guelphs

128 Purgatorio with Ghibellines, as he has with Guido del Duca and Rinieri da Calboli. Mainardi and Lizio (l. 37) are Arrigo Mainardi, an ally of Guido’s against the Guelphs, and Lizio da Valbona, who joined Rinieri against the Ghibellines. Pier Traversaro and Guido di Carpigna (l. 38) are, respectively, the Ghibelline lord of Ravenna whom Guido (and Mainardi) supported, and a later Guelph podestà of the same city. Such pairings of Guelph and Ghibelline continue in Guido’s lament, implying that the envy underlying the bitter internecine feuds between the two parties is now meaningless, and that the virtue of these former leaders transcends party lines. Canto 14 ends with two examples of envy punished, presented (as were the examples of charity) as disembodied voices, this time like thunderclaps. The first voice is that of Cain, who killed his brother, Abel, out of envy because God seemed to prefer Abel’s offering over his own. The second voice is that of the princess Aglauros. Her story, as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (2.737–832), is as follows: The god Mercury had fallen in love with Aglauros’s sister, Herse, and approached Aglauros to arrange a tryst with Herse. Aglauros at first agreed, but when Mercury arrived to lie with Herse, Aglauros, out of envy that her sister should become the god’s lover, refused to let Mercury in. The god retaliated by turning Aglauros to stone. Two significant points are suggested by these two examples. First in both stories it is envy of divine favor shown to another that receives punishment. Envy, it seems, is not simply the coveting of another’s possessions but is, as invidia, a hatred that directly opposes the will of God. As Aquinas says, “Charity is not any kind of love, but the love of God: hence not any kind of hatred is opposed to it directly, but the hatred of God, which is the most grievous of all sins” (ST 1.2, q. 73, a. 4). Second the examples of envy both involve the act of invidia directed against a sibling, one closest in blood to the sinner. In the context of this canto it is clear that Dante considers the violent civil wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines, Whites and Blacks, in Tuscany and Romagna to be the result of precisely this kind of sin: It is envy that causes all of this strife in Italy, and it is charity that must amend it.

Virgil explains that these voices are the “curb” of envy, returning to the imagery of training animals used earlier in Canto 13, where the exempla of charity are referred to as the “whip” of envy. It seems clear that this imagery applies, as well, to the long discourses of Guido da Duca that make up most of the canto. Far from being a digression on Italian politics, Guido’s dual laments parallel the classical and biblical examples of envy and charity. Guido provides a contemporary Italian “whip” of envy by citing the 10 noble leaders of Romagna and a contemporary “curb” in delineating the bestial inhabitants of the cities of Tuscany. The two very esoteric passages that open Canto 15—the six lines Dante uses to say that it is 3:00 P.M. (ll. 1–6) and the nine-line description he gives of a reflected ray of light—have puzzled and sometimes tried the patience of readers who would simply like to get on with the story. Some commentators have suggested that the poet is simply being playful here. But there seems to be more to these passages. The canto in general is filled with images of light and the reflection of light; thus it contrasts starkly with Canto 16, in which all is shrouded by the dark smoke that represents the sin of wrath. In the first six lines the poet implies that it is 3:00 P.M. in Purgatory, and therefore 3:00 A.M. in Jerusalem, directly antipodal to Purgatory. Since Italy is by Dante’s reckoning 45 degrees west of Jerusalem, it is midnight in the place where he now writes this canto. The light and angle of the sun are, of course, the ultimate subject of these lines, but they also introduce the idea of the evening as a mirror image of the morning as the sun’s angle in the afternoon reflects its position before noon. That reflecting image continues in the next few tercets: As the poets walk westward into the setting sun, Dante mistakenly believes he is blinded by the sun’s reflection off the surface before him at an angle that flashes the light into his eyes. In fact, he is looking at the brightness of the approaching angel of charity. The light that the angel radiates is, in a sense, the reflected light of God’s love— though more technically the angel receives and gives off divine light according to his own capacity to love, as Virgil suggests later in the canto when he explains that “the greater the proportion of our

Purgatorio love, / the more eternal goodness we receive” (ll. 71–72). Thus the imagery of light and reflection carries over into Dante’s question to Virgil about the nature of envy as Guido del Duca had expressed it. Virgil answers this question first by asserting that the treasures of this world, because they are finite, cannot be shared equally to the satisfaction of all. Whatever one person owns reduces what can be possessed by another, and therefore the desire for temporal goods breeds envy over whatever is possessed by anyone else. Virgil then contrasts this state of affairs with the situation of heavenly treasure: Virtue and the love of God are riches that only grow greater when they are shared. In another metaphor involving light and mirrors Virgil declares that each heavenly soul is like a mirror reflecting the light of God’s love—the more mirrors, the more light is given off, and the initial source of the light is itself never diminished by the sharing. Commentators over the years have pointed out probable sources for these sentiments in Dante, including Saint Augustine, who in The City of God (15.5) asserts that goodness is the one thing that is not diminished when it is shared, and Saint Gregory the Great, who in his Moralia in Job (6.46.86) advises that the way to be free of envy is to embrace our heavenly heritage, which is not lessened no matter how many souls inherit it. As the poets finish their climb, made easier for Dante as another letter p is removed from his brow and the weight of sin he must carry is reduced, they stand on the ledge of wrath. The examples (the “whip” of wrath) are revealed to Dante in this round by an ecstatic vision—one that he experiences but Virgil does not, presumably because the vision is only granted to the saved. Some commentators refer to these visions as examples of meekness, but in fact the beatitude that will be sung at the end of this terrace is “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Canto 17, ll. 68–69). The specific virtue directly opposed to wrath is a kind of patient gentleness that promotes peace, as the beatitude suggests. The first example, taken as always from the life of the Virgin, shows the pilgrim a scene at the temple in Jerusalem with Mary finding the

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young Jesus disputing among the scholars in the temple. The incident (related in Luke 2.41–48) took place at Passover, when Mary and Joseph had taken the youth Jesus to Jerusalem and, after starting back home and finding that he was not among their party, searched frantically for him throughout the city for three days. Despite her obvious anxiety Mary’s tone is not irate or accusatory but rather gentle and without anger. The second positive example, drawn again from classical sources, reveals the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus (560–527 B.C.E.) in conversation with his angry wife. When an overeager suitor for their daughter’s hand publicly embraced the girl without having obtained her parents’ approval, Pisistratus’s wife demanded that Pisistratus have the young man executed. Pisistratus is supposed to have replied, “If we kill those who love us, what will we do to those who hate us?” This reputedly defused his wife’s wrath. The third and most extreme example of gentleness as the antithesis of anger is the scene of the stoning of Saint Stephen. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was accused of blasphemy by the Jewish authorities and stoned to death, praying for the souls of his killers even as he was dying (Acts 7.54– 59). While the first two acts of peacemaking are fairly commonplace, the extraordinary mercy and selfless love demonstrated by Stephen as he forgives his murderers are beyond any normal expectations, and so is a particularly lofty example toward which the wrathful penitent might aspire. When the pilgrim has seen this final vision, Virgil urges him to waken and move ahead. Virgil, who has not seen the vision, tells the pilgrim that he can read his mind, but readers have generally been unsure as to just what Virgil means by this. Certainly he is aware that Dante is experiencing something, and he knows that their experience on each terrace has begun with positive examples of one of the virtues. That much he knows and thus reads the situation, if not specifically reading Dante’s mind. He urges the pilgrim on as they walk now into the setting sun, and a cloud of black smoke moves toward them. This cloud, the visual symbol of wrath, will surround the poets throughout Canto 16.

130    Purgatorio Canto 16 of the Purgatorio is the 50th canto in the Comedy. This Canto and the next mark the midway point of the journey, and Dante takes the opportunity to reinforce some of the major political and theological themes of the poem, such as the degeneracy of human society, the primacy of human free will, the corruption of the papacy, and the need for a strong secular ruler in Europe. The burning smoke that shrouds the chapter is a fairly obvious symbol of the sin of wrath, both because it is hot and because it blinds the eyes as wrath may blind one’s mind to reason. Here Virgil, apparently in his role as human reason, is able to lead the pilgrim through the smoke—an allegory of the soul’s relying on reason to overcome blind rage. On this terrace the penitents chant the Agnus Dei (“Lamb of God”), a prayer included in the litany of the Mass since the seventh century. The

Marco the Lombard, from Canto 16 of the Purgatorio, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

prayer twice repeats the line “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us,” and ends with the line “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, give us peace.” The focus on the gentle lamb and the petition for peace make the prayer perfectly appropriate for the souls purging themselves of wrath. Most of Canto 16 is devoted to the lengthy discourse of Marco Lombardo. Marco’s aside about the corrupt state of society (ll. 47–48) leads to the pilgrim’s question about whether the stars are responsible for the evil that people do. Marco’s answer, which runs to some 66 lines, follows the pattern of Scholastic discourse (as Durling points out in his edition, 269): He first refutes the argument Dante has suggested and then proves his own position. The stars—which can be read, from a modern perspective, to imply any kind of natural forces (genetics, for example) that might act to determine human behavior—can undeniably exert an influence on the inclinations of people. The intellect, however, is created directly by God (this was the medieval notion stemming ultimately from Aristotle). Thus the intellect is not subject to the influence of the stars; nor is the human will, which is an aspect of the intellect. The human will is therefore free, and human beings are responsible for their actions, good or ill. If this were not so, then there would be no justice in divine reward or punishment. What, then, is the source of society’s corruption? Not human nature, Marco implies. In an image directly opposed to the traditional Augustinian Christian view of human nature corrupted by original sin, Marco (and presumably Dante, speaking through him) asserts that children are born with a natural inclination toward the good (an important theme that receives more detailed treatment in the next canto). They love all of the good things of creation indiscriminately and therefore need the guidance of law to direct their wills appropriately, first toward God as the highest good and then to more trivial goods according to their merit. Dante had developed this idea earlier, in Convivio 4 and in De monarchia 3.14–15, where he had stressed that the law would have been unnecessary had man remained in Paradise, but that our original inno-

Purgatorio cence had been weakened by original sin, so that the human will needed guidance. The cause of society’s current degenerate state, Marco asserts (reiterating what Dante had written in both the Convivio and De monarchia), is the involvement of the pope in secular politics. Dante uses the image of two suns (l. 107) to suggest the equal authority of pope and emperor—in doing so he rejects contemporary Guelph rhetoric that pictured the pope as the Sun and the emperor as the Moon, which shone with reflected and hence subordinate light. The problem, Marco says, is that one “sun” has extinguished the light of the other (l. 109), as the pope has quashed the power of the emperor. Of the current pontiff (who, in 1300, would have been Dante’s old enemy Boniface VIII), Marco says he “can chew the cud but lacks the cloven hoof” (l. 98). This curious image is based on the dietary laws in Leviticus 11.3, where the Israelites are permitted to eat animals with hooves, so long as the foot is cloven and the animal chews the cud. Such dietary laws were, of course, meaningless to medieval Christians, and so biblical commentators interpreted such passages allegorically—in this particular case, as a description of a just man or to the Christian clergy: “Chewing the cud” was seen as symbolizing spiritual meditation, while the cloven foot implied the ability to judge and to make distinctions. The current pope Boniface, therefore, Marco seems to picture as one who is learned and meditates on the Scriptures but who does not properly distinguish between good and evil. Marco finally turns from philosophical discourse to more concrete historical applications, pinpointing the reign of the Emperor Frederick II (1220– 50) as the point of corruption of the divinely ordained relationship between pope and emperor. Frederick experienced increasingly degenerating relationships with a series of popes beginning in the late 1220s, often resulting in war. But Marco names three old men—Lombard nobles he had been familiar with during his life who still upheld the old ideals of virtue. One of these is Currado da Palazzo, podestà of Piecenza in 1288, who, according to an unsubstantiated legend, went into battle bearing his army’s standard and, despite losing both hands in the battle, continued to hold up

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the banner with his bloody stumps until he ultimately succumbed to his wounds. The other two are Guido da Castel and Gherardo da Camino of Treviso, both of whom Dante had already praised as models of nobility in the Convivio and both of whom, in all likelihood, had given Dante refuge during his long exile. Ironically all three of these virtuous old men were Guelphs—the party supporting the pope’s secular power. The three examples of wrath and its consequences in Canto 17 include one biblical and two classical cases. Scholars have seen them as illustrating three categories of wrath: against kin, against neighbor, and against God. The first example presents the story of Procne, Tereus, and Philomela (already alluded to as one of the exempla in Canto 9). Violence begets violence in this story, in which Procne plots vengeance on her husband, Tereus, for his rape and mutilation of her sister—a vengeance that involves her slaying her own child and feeding the boy to his father. The story presents the horrifying consequences of wrath against one’s own family. The second example depicts the story of Haman and Mordecai from the book of Esther. Angered at the Jew Mordecai’s failure to bow to him, Haman persuades King Ahasuerus to issue a decree calling for the execution of all the Jews in Persia. But Mordecai’s niece is Esther, the favorite consort of the king, and when she intercedes, the Jews are spared and Haman himself is executed on the very gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. Thus wrath against one’s neighbors has deadly consequences. Finally Dante uses an example drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid. Queen Amata, wife of King Latinus of Latium, is enraged at the thought of her daughter Lavinia’s marrying the foreign invader Aeneas rather than her own choice, the native Turnus. In Book 12 of the Aeneid (ll. 595ff.) Amata mistakenly believes that Turnus has died in battle and takes her own life. From Dante’s point of view Aeneas’s marriage to Lavinia was a part of the divinely ordained founding of the Roman Empire, from which the Christian Church would spring. Thus Amata’s rage at this destiny illustrates wrath directed at God himself, and her death suggests the consequences of such wrath.

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After leaving the terrace of wrath for the fourth ledge, Dante experiences a great heaviness and is all but paralyzed by exhaustion. In part Dante is participating in the sin of sloth, purged on this level. And since as we have already seen the pilgrims cannot move up the mountain during the night, it would be easy for them to rest here. But the pilgrim demonstrates the kind of zeal that the penitents on this level should be learning when he asks Virgil to explain the nature of this particular terrace—a request that ultimately sparks Virgil’s long discourse on the nature of sin. Virgil’s speech, at 53 lines one of the longest in the Purgatorio, focuses on love as the motivating force behind all human actions, good or bad. As such it is a speech of central importance to the Comedy as a whole, and appropriately it is placed here, in the central canto of the central canticle of the poem. The doctrine, as Virgil explains it, is drawn chiefly from various sections of the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, though it owes something to Saint Augustine, Boethius, and Christian Neoplatonist philosophers as well. Every creature in the universe, Virgil explains, is moved by love. But love can be of two kinds. The first is natural love, a love divinely instilled in all created things that naturally inclines them to desire their own perfection, which generally means desiring their proper position in God’s orderly cosmos. For human beings and for angels this natural love is what inspires them to desire the highest good, which is God himself. If natural love were the only motivation for human actions, sin would not exist, since this kind of love never errs. But in creatures with free will (i.e., humans and angels) there is another kind of love, a mental kind that involves free choice. This elective kind of love can err, Virgil says, and this is the cause of sin. Errant love can fall into three categories: It may be misdirected toward the wrong goals; it may pursue the good with too little zeal; or it may pursue secondary goods with excessive enthusiasm. These three categories form the basis of the structure of Purgatory (as the threefold pattern of sins of the lion, leopard, and she-wolf provided the scheme for the Inferno’s structure).

Misplaced love, a love directed at the wrong object, is chiefly a perverted sort of self-love: It might include the kind of pride that glories in elevation above the status of others, or envy that resents the elevation of others, or wrath that seeks to harm others because of such resentment. Thus the first type of defective love is punished on the first three terraces. As Virgil had made clear at the beginning of his discourse, this fourth terrace punishes sloth, the sin caused by the second type of defective love, a love of the good that lacks vigor or passion. The good implied here is the highest good, God himself; thus sloth is insufficient zeal for the offered love of God. In Dante’s day it was considered a sin to which members of the clergy were particularly susceptible. The third category of defective love, the pursuit of secondary goods with inappropriate zest, results in the sins purged on the three terraces above this one. While Virgil does not specify, preferring that Dante learn about these sins as he reaches those levels, Dante’s readers would certainly know that the last three terraces would be devoted to the sins of avarice, gluttony, and lust. The earthly pleasures of riches, food, and physical love are part of God’s bounty to humans, but to love them excessively was to forsake God himself in favor of his gifts.

MIDDLE PURGATORY— LOVE DEFECTIVE (CANTO 18) Synopsis Virgil has ceased speaking as Canto 18 begins, but Dante is eager for more knowledge. He asks his guide to define love. Virgil begins by reiterating Marco Lombardo’s description of the newborn soul from Canto 16: The child’s mind will incline toward anything that gives it pleasure, and such an inclination is love. Dante asks how, if the source of love is outside the human being, a person can be praised or blamed for such love. Virgil answers that desire itself is neither good nor bad. But human reason has the power of judgment and distinction, and through free will man has the power to resist those desires that are evil. Virgil admits, however, that he can only explain as much as human reason can discern. Beatrice, he says, will be able to explain more when Dante meets her.

Purgatorio It is now near midnight, and Dante’s thoughts begin to wander sleepily when suddenly a large group of souls comes running around the side of the mountain, spurred on by a zealous desire for the good. Two spirits leading the group shout out the exempla of zeal. The first recalls the Virgin Mary hastening to the hills to visit Elizabeth and give her the news of Christ’s incarnation. The second alludes to Julius Caesar, who, en route to Ilerda in Spain, stopped on the way to besiege Marseilles but left part of his army there and hastened on to complete his original objective. The penitents, as they follow, shout out words of encouragement to spur on one another. As the souls rush past, Virgil asks where the passage to the next level may be found, but none of the shades can stop to answer. The abbot of San Zeno takes the time to call out as he rushes by, telling Virgil to follow the group and he will find the path. The abbot also takes the opportunity to cry out a brief prophecy against Alberto della Scala, lord of Verona, who has appointed an inappropriate abbot to the speaker’s old post at San Zeno. As the abbot leaves the poets far behind, Virgil tells Dante to turn around and observe the two souls at the end of the large group of penitents: These are shouting out the negative examples for this terrace—illustrations of sloth and its consequences. The first holds up the stubborn Israelites wandering with Moses in the desert, who were punished for their recalcitrance when they were prevented from crossing the Jordan River into the promised land. The second example recalls the companions of Aeneas, who settled in Sicily rather than moving on with Aeneas into Latium, and so missed out on the founding of Rome. As the canto ends, the pilgrim’s head is spinning with what he has just witnessed, and he is drifting into sleep, where his thoughts begin to form themselves into dreams. Commentary Readers may find it odd that as Canto 18 opens, following Virgil’s lengthy lecture on love, the pilgrim still wants more information, asking his guide for a definition of love. But for the third consecutive canto here at the center of the Comedy Dante deals with central theological and philosophical issues. In terms borrowed directly from Scholastic

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philosophy and reminiscent of stilnovist poetry, particularly Guido Cavalcanti’s great canzone “Donna me prega” (“A Lady Asks Me”), Virgil discusses the psychology of love. Scholastic psychology was based on Aristotle’s De anima (“On the Soul”) as interpreted in the 12th and 13th centuries by the Muslim Averröes and Christian philosophers such as Albertus Magnus and, most immediately for Dante, Thomas Aquinas. Virgil begins by returning to Marco Lombardo’s picture of the soul that enters the world with a natural potential for loving. That potential becomes actual when it focuses on a particular object of desire. In Aristotelian psychology the object of desire is an image (what Aquinas calls the “intelligible form” and Dante here calls an “intention”) abstracted from the individual object or person (ll. 22–24). When the soul contemplates this image and receives pleasure from it, this is the first stage of love (ll. 25–27). The soul is thus drawn to the object of its desire, as fire is drawn naturally upward toward the sphere of fire according to medieval science (ll. 28–22). As Virgil has described love, it seems inevitable that the soul must love what attracts it, and Dante’s questioning of how blame can be attached to such desire is perfectly justified. Over the next 30 lines Virgil discusses the role of reason in the process he has just described. Sometime before the soul begins to move toward the object of desire, reason may step in to control the motions of the will. This is the consensual love of the mind Virgil had discussed in the previous canto. Just as Marco Lombardo had asserted that human free will could control any forces that may exert influence upon people from without, so here Virgil affirms the ability of that same free will to resist and control impulses from within. Sin, like virtue, may be motivated by love in these central cantos of the Comedy, but under no circumstances is human responsibility mitigated by any irresistible force. Free will means that people are always responsible for their actions—for the sins that consign them to Purgatory as well as for the will to purge those sins on these terraces. Sloth (or acedia) is the sin expiated on this level, and the penitents here run ceaselessly as a demonstration of the virtue of zeal. But unlike the souls

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on the other terraces, these sinners recite no unison prayer. Perhaps Dante saw the immobility of prayer as an easy opportunity to slip into sloth, a sin associated particularly with the clergy in the Middle Ages. Since medieval acedia was conceived chiefly as the neglect of religious duties, and might be illustrated by a lazy monk or parish priest (as it is in passus 5 of Piers Plowman), these souls are not allowed to put aside their zealous penitence to take the chance of falling asleep over their prayers. It is no coincidence that the one soul who speaks to the pilgrims on this level is himself a monk— the abbot of San Zeno. This abbot has not been absolutely identified, although because he mentions the “good Emperor” Frederick Barbarossa’s zealous destruction of the rebellious city of Milan approvingly, it is assumed that he is Gherardo II (d. 1187), the abbot of Verona’s San Zeno abbey during Frederick’s reign. Frederick’s actions are apparently meant to contrast the abuse of power demonstrated by the lord of Verona, Alberto della Scala (father of Dante’s great patron CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA). The abbot’s prophecy concerning Alberto—that he will soon have reason to rue his actions (Alberto died in 1301)—refers to Alberto’s appointment of his illegitimate son, Guiseppe, to the abbot’s own former post at San Zeno in 1292. In violation of church law Guiseppe was appointed despite his illegitimacy, his physical deformity, and his mental incompetence. Any one of these defects would have been cause to deny Guiseppe the office without special dispensation, and the latter two almost guaranteed the nonperformance of the abbot’s spiritual duties—making Guiseppe guilty of acedia, a fact that explains the inclusion of this odd detail in this canto. The examples of zeal that the penitents shout out begin, again, with the Virgin Mary. The words allude to Mary’s visitation of her cousin Elizabeth in Luke 1.39–56: Informed by the angel Gabriel of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Mary rushes immediately into the hill country where Elizabeth lives with Zachariah. The penitents emulate her spiritual zeal to visit her cousin and share with her the good news of the annunciation—at which the child in Elizabeth’s womb (the future John the Baptist) leapt for joy. The second example illustrating secu-

lar zeal, recalls the turning point in the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey. En route to the Spanish city of Ilerda (modern day Lerida) in 48–49 B.C.E., Caesar stopped to lay siege to Massilia (now Marseilles), which had allied itself with Pompey. But refusing to be deterred from his main objective, Caesar left a part of his army there under Brutus and zealously pushed on to northern Spain by forced marches to encounter the main part of Pompey’s army. Within 40 days Caesar had subdued the whole western part of the empire under his authority. The examples of sloth called out by the last of the penitents to race by are also taken from both biblical and classical sources. The first recalls the reluctance of the Israelites to follow the spiritual lead of Moses after their escape from bondage in Egypt through the Red Sea. Because of their lack of zeal in pursuit of the good—of the Promised Land—God delayed their crossing of the Jordan for 40 years, until all those who had failed in their diligence had died. Only Joshua and Caleb, and the children born in the wilderness, were allowed to cross over into the land of Canaan (Numbers 14.20–33). The second example presents a closely parallel tradition from Virgil’s Aeneid, in which a group of Aeneas’s companions refuses to follow him to Latium, preferring instead to stop and settle in Sicily (Aeneid 5.605– 640). Aeneas allows them to stay, but as a result of their lack of zeal for their promised end, they miss out on the glory of founding the Roman Empire.

UPPER PURGATORY—LOVE MISDIRECTED (CANTOS 19–27) Synopsis When Canto 19 opens, it is close to dawn, and the pilgrim dreams of a hideous, deformed woman who, as Dante stares at her, gradually transforms into a beautiful lady who entices him with an irresistibly delightful song. She is a Siren, she says, but as she sings, a heavenly lady appears by her side. The saintly woman calls to Virgil, who moves toward the Siren and tears off her garment, exposing her belly and loins. Such a stench arises from those hidden parts that Dante awakens from his dream, only to find the real Virgil chiding him as, for the third time, he tries to rouse the pilgrim from slumber.

Purgatorio Dante rises and, burdened with his thoughts, follows Virgil to the passageway to the fifth terrace, where the angel of zeal shows them the way up, pronounces the beatitude “Blessed are they that mourn,” and brushes Dante’s forehead with his wing, erasing another letter p from his brow. As they climb, Virgil asks the pilgrim what is troubling him, and Dante responds that he cannot get his dream out of his mind. Virgil tells him that the figure in the dream was the sorceress who plagues those on the terraces above, and he urges Dante to make haste. The pilgrim climbs as quickly as he can and emerges on the next ledge, where numerous spirits lie facedown in the dirt. The spirits are chanting verse 25 from Psalm 119, “My soul clings to the dust.” Virgil asks for the passage up, and one of the souls answers that if the poets are exempt from the penance of this ledge, they should go toward the right to find the quickest passage up. Dante moves toward the supine spirit who spoke and asks who he is and why he is here. The spirit identifies himself as POPE ADRIAN V, a pontiff who reigned only 38 days. He reveals how he was beguiled by avarice in life and describes the penance of the greedy as a kind of contrapasso: As in life they would not raise their eyes from the things of the earth toward Heaven, so on the mountain they are forced to look only into the dust, with their hands and feet tied, holding them motionless until God gives them leave to move. When the pilgrim learns he is speaking to a former pope, he kneels in reverence, but Pope Adrian chastises him for doing so. Alluding to a passage from the gospels, Adrian asserts that the souls on this mountain are all equal in being servants only of God himself. He sends the pilgrim off to continue his journey, first expressing a wish that his niece, Alagia, still alive on earth, may not be led astray by the example of Adrian’s family. At the pope’s request the pilgrim leaves Adrian to his penance and as Canto 20 opens begins to make his way around the bodies lying prone in the dust. Dante, recalling the beginning of the Comedy, lets out an angry apostrophe to the shewolf of incontinence and asks how long the world must wait for the one who will make the beast flee

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(the greyhound of Inferno 1, l. 101). As the poets move along the ledge, they hear one soul crying out the examples that oppose the sin of greed: He speaks first of Mary, who because of her poverty gave birth in a stable. Then he mentions Fabricus, a consul of Rome who refused to accept bribes and as a result died a pauper. Finally the soul speaks of Saint Nicholas, who out of generosity provided dowries for three poor girls to prevent their forced prostitution. Dante asks the speaker who he is and why he is the one calling out these examples. The penitent identifies himself as HUGH CAPET, founder of the Capetian line of kings who have ruled France since the late 10th century. Hugh proceeds to condemn his long line of descendants for their unbridled greed and violence. He traces this first to the seizure of Provence by Louis IX and his brother, Charles of Anjou, who had married the daughters of Count Raymond Berenger of Provence and therefore claimed the territory as their wives’ dowry. Hugh then goes on to condemn the French monarchy’s annexation of Normandy, Ponthieu, and Gascony, as well as Charles of Anjou’s invasion of Italy and his claiming of the throne of Sicily—all done, Hugh repeats ironically three times, to “make amends” for the initial sin. Hugh goes on to prophesy (from the vantage point of the fictional Easter 1300 date) the coming misdeeds of the Capetian monarchy. These include Charles of Valois’s invasion and “pacification” of Florence at the invitation of Pope Boniface, which resulted in Dante’s permanent exile, and Charles II of Naples’s selling his youngest daughter into marriage (for a large amount of money) to the elderly Azzo VIII of Este. But the worst act of his descendants, Hugh foresees, will be Philip IV’s violation of Pope Boniface’s palace at Anagni and imprisonment of the pope (1303), followed by Philip’s destruction and plundering of the Knights Templars. When, Hugh asks, will God show his vengeance on his evil line? Hugh then goes on to answer Dante’s second question: The words he called out were the prayers that each soul on this level is required to pray repeatedly each day—it was merely coincidence that only he was praying aloud at the moment the

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poets heard him. Hugh adds that during the hours of the night the penitents must recite a different prayer, enumerating examples of the sin of avarice. Hugh mentions seven examples, the most on any level of Purgatory after pride: Pygmalion, Midas, Achan, Ananias (and his wife, Sapphira), Heliodorus, Polymnestor, and Crassus. The pilgrims move on along the terrace when suddenly the entire mountain shakes, filling the pilgrim with fear. This is followed by a shout of Gloria in excelsis Deo (“Glory to God in the highest”). Puzzled, the pilgrim continues to move along the ledge, trying to understand what has happened. As Dante and Virgil proceed through the circle of the avaricious, the pilgrim continues to wonder about the events that closed Canto 20, when suddenly a shade approaches them from behind. Dante compares the meeting to Christ’s appearance to the two travelers on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24.13–16). The new figure greets them, and Virgil wishes him God’s blessing, explaining that he is a soul from Limbo guiding the living pilgrim Dante through Purgatory to Heaven. Virgil then asks the spirit about the earthquake and the accompanying shout of praise that shook the mountain. The shade explains that Purgatory is not subject to the kinds of weather or tremors that affect the mundane world. The mountain, however, does respond when a soul feels that its purification is complete and it is ready to move into Heaven. The will to do so, the shade goes on, is only acquired when the soul is purified, for so God’s justice has willed it. Thus all the souls cry out when the purified soul begins to climb. The shade then says that he is himself the one whose purgation has ended and who has now begun his climb toward Paradise. He identifies himself as Statius, the Roman poet and author of the Thebaid. He won fame as a poet and was given the laurel crown, and he mentions in passing that his poetic inspiration was from the Aeneid, a work that has inspired a thousand poets. Statius even expresses a desire to have lived at the time of Virgil, saying he would have spent another year in Purgatory for the chance to have met his idol. At this Virgil gives Dante a sign to remain silent, but Statius notices a smile flash across the pilgrim’s

face and asks what it means. With his guide’s permission Dante reveals that Statius is, in fact, in the presence of Virgil himself. When he hears this, Statius kneels down to embrace Virgil’s feet, but Virgil reminds him that both of them are shades, and Statius, rising, excuses his impulsiveness, saying that his love of Virgil made him err, forgetting that shadows are not solid objects. The poets, now accompanied by Statius, leave the terrace of avarice as Canto 22 opens. The angel removes another letter p from Dante’s forehead and recites the beatitude “Blessed are those who . . . thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5.6, NRSV), omitting the part of the verse referring to “hunger,” which will be heard on the next level. Thus lightened, Dante moves more quickly as he climbs toward the sixth ledge behind the swiftly moving classical poets. Virgil tells Statius that since Juvenal entered Limbo and mentioned to Virgil the love that Statius held for him, Virgil had felt a strong bond with the later poet. But Virgil wonders how a man like Statius could have been drawn to the sin of avarice. Smiling, Statius corrects Virgil’s misapprehension: His sin was not avarice but rather its opposite, prodigality—both sins are purged on the same terrace (as in Hell, the hoarders and the wasters are both punished in circle four). Indeed, Statius says he would be rolling those great weights in Hell right now had he not relinquished his sin after reading Virgil’s lines attacking avarice in the Aeneid (3.56–57), when Aeneas stands before the grave of Polydorus and recalls his murder by the avaricious Polymnestor. Virgil’s second question of Statius is more fundamental: There is no evidence of his Christian belief in the Thebaid. When, Virgil asks, did Statius become a Christian? Statius answers that just as Virgil had inspired him to be a poet, so Virgil had shown him the way to Christian faith. The words of Virgil’s FOURTH ECLOGUE, proclaiming a new Golden Age with the birth of a new infant from Heaven, were the source of Statius’s conversion. He goes on to explain that the new religion was just entering Rome as he read Virgil’s words, and he thought the message of the new preachers accorded so well with Virgil’s poem that he was

Purgatorio drawn to them. During the persecution of Domitian he helped the Christians, he says, so that before he completed his work on the Thebaid he had been baptized. For fear of persecution, however, he kept his faith secret, and for that lack of zeal he was required to spend 400 years on the terrace of sloth. Now Statius questions Virgil, asking where some of his fellow poets are now—particularly Plautus, Terence, Caecilius, and Varius. Virgil replies that all are in Limbo, along with Homer and several of the people in Statius’s epic, including Antigone and Ismene. By now though the poets have reached the sixth terrace, and it is after 10 A.M. They walk, as usual, toward the right, Virgil and Statius walking together and Dante following behind, listening to them speak of poetry. Suddenly they stop conversing as the three poets come upon a tree bearing a sweet fruit that cannot be reached because, like an inverted fir tree, the tree has large branches at the top and smaller ones below, making it impossible to climb. The tree is watered by a stream that flows down the cliff wall. From within the tree itself issues a voice calling out that the fruit and water are prohibited. The voice then cites five examples of abstinence, the opposite of the sin of gluttony. These include Mary’s abstinence at the wedding at Cana; the temperance of the women of ancient Rome, who drank only water; Daniel’s rejection of the food offered him by the king (Daniel 1.3–20); the simple food of mankind’s first age; and John the Baptist’s simple meals of honey and locusts (Matthew 3.4). Dante is still peering up into the tree as Canto 23 opens, trying to find the source of the voice. Virgil calls to him and the pilgrim obediently follows, still listening admiringly to the conversation of the two classical poets. Suddenly they hear the words of a psalm—Labia mea Domine—alluding to the 15th verse of Psalm 50 (51 in modern translations), called the Miserere: “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise” (NRSV). With that a group of silent spirits begins to move swiftly past the poets. These, the spirits of the gluttonous, are an emaciated group of shades so thin that they remind the pilgrim of the way the Jews must have looked at the siege of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., when, he mentions, Mary devoured her own child. In the

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lean faces of the penitents the pilgrim says he can clearly read the word omo (man) because of the pronounced rings of their eyes. As Dante contemplates these figures, wondering about their famished state, one of them stares at him and cries out in pleasant surprise. Though his face is considerably changed, Dante recognizes the voice of his close friend FORESE DONATI. Forese begs Dante to tell him about himself and his two companions. But Dante is overcome by grief at the sight of Forese’s shriveled frame and asks the reason for his friend’s disfigurement. Forese responds that the souls on this ledge are purifying themselves through abstinence. For their penance they circle the ledge continually, passing the tree with its fruit and water with each round, thereby rekindling their hunger and their determined resistance to it. Now, realizing that Forese had died less than five years earlier, and knowing that Forese did not, in fact, turn to God until he was close to death (ll. 79–81), the pilgrim wants to know how Forese has already climbed so high on the mountain; Dante would have expected to see him among the late repentant in Ante-Purgatory. Forese’s answer emphasizes once again the efficacy of intercessory prayer for those in Purgatory: It was the pious prayers of his sweet and loving widow, Nella, that sped Forese to this height. From this reference to his virtuous widow Forese launches into a vigorous attack on the brazen women of Florence among whom she lives. Forese condemns their habit of wearing shamelessly revealing clothing on the city streets and prophesies that soon they will not only be condemned from the pulpits of Florence but have further reason to lament their actions before the infants of the present day begin to grow beards. But now Forese returns to his questioning of Dante: With the bystanders from his penitent group Forese has noticed Dante’s shadow and wants to know how he had arrived here in his living body. Dante responds that he was called from the life of sin that he and Forese had shared and has been given the grace to be led through Hell and Purgatory in his living flesh by Virgil himself, until he meets Beatrice. He then introduces Statius as the one for whom the mountain has just trembled.

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The Gluttons, from Canto 24 of the Purgatorio, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

As they keep walking along the sixth terrace, Dante continues speaking with Forese through most of Canto 24, while the other shades look on in wonder at Dante’s living body. Dante asks where Forese’s sister, Piccarda Donati, is, and who some of his companions are among the crowd around them. The virtuous Piccarda, Forese says, is now in Paradise. He then points out the poet Orbicciani da Lucca Bonagiunta, Pope Martin IV of Tours (known for his fondness for eels), the prominent Ghibelline Ubaldino della Pila (father of Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila and known for the elaborate feasts he hosted), Bonifazio de’ Fieschi of Genova (archbishop of Ravenna who negotiated the release of the imprisoned Charles II), and Marchese degli Argugliosi of Forlì (a notorious drinker of wine). The pilgrim is particularly drawn to Bonagiunta, who seems to wish to speak with him. When Dante

addresses the Luccan poet, Bonagiunta prophesies that a woman of Lucca named Gentucca will give Dante a reason to love the city of Lucca. In what is perhaps the most famous scene in the Purgatorio Bonagiunta then asks whether the pilgrim is the author of the poem Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”)—the first canzone in the Vita nuova. The pilgrim takes credit in an indirect way, identifying himself as one who takes his inspiration from love and “gives form” to what love “dictates in my heart” (ll. 52–54). Bonagiunta, who seems to understand the pilgrim’s words better than most readers, says that he now understands the “knot” that held him back along with Guittone d’Arezzo (founder of the earlier Tuscan school of poetry) and Giacomo da Lentino (Jacopo da Lentini, “the Notary”), founder of the Sicilian school that introduced courtly poetry into Italy, from what he calls the Dolce stil novo (the sweet new style) used by Dante (and, by implication, by Guido Guinizelli and Guido Cavalcanti, major poets Bonagiunta does not mention). Dante’s verse, Bonagiunta says, closely and directly follows the dictates of love, as his did not. As Bonagiunta finishes his observation, he and the other penitents rush off to continue their penance, while Forese lags behind to continue his conversation with the pilgrim. Longing to see his friend again soon, he asks Dante when he will return. Dante answers that he does not know how long it will be before his own death, but that his heart will certainly be there before him, because of the degeneration of his native city. Forese tells Dante to take heart and foresees that the “guiltiest of them all”—referring to his own brother, Corso Donati—will soon be dragged into Hell (Corso died in 1308). Forese then rushes off to join the rest of his group, leaving Dante to continue at his slower pace with Virgil and Statius. The pilgrim suddenly sees another tree before him on the path, laden with food like the first, but surrounded by shades reaching up and begging fruitlessly. Finally the shades give up and leave, and the poets approach the tree. Like the first tree, this one speaks to them. They are warned not to go closer and told that this tree is an offshoot of the tree that first enticed Eve, which is planted higher

Purgatorio up the mountain (in the Earthly Paradise). The tree then calls out two examples of the sin of gluttony punished—as usual, one from classical tradition and one from the Bible. The first example concerns the Centaurs, who became so drunk at Pirithous’s wedding that they tried to carry off the bride and several other women, only to be slain by Theseus and other guests. The second example refers to the army of Gideon: In his war against the Midianites Gideon is instructed by God to lead his army to a river and watch them drink (Judges 7.5–6). He then rejects all those who drink with abandon, putting their faces in the river, and chooses only the 300 men who drink more cautiously. Leaving the tree, the poets walk on in silence, lost in thought, until the voice of the Angel of Abstinence startles them. The angel, still blinding the pilgrim with his brilliance, points the way to the next level and erases another letter p from the pilgrim’s forehead. As Dante begins his ascent, he hears the words of the beatitude, blessing those who hunger for righteousness. Again the pilgrim feels the need to move on quickly, as it is 2:00 P.M. as Canto 25 opens. The three poets begin the ascent to the seventh level. As they climb, the pilgrim is struggling internally to ask a question, and, encouraged by Virgil to speak, Dante asks how the souls on the sixth terrace had grown so lean, since their bodies were shades and needed no food. Virgil answers with two obscure analogies, alluding to the myth of Meleager—who stayed alive only as long as a stick of wood remained unconsumed in his mother’s fireplace—and to the image one sees in a mirror. Neither of these analogies is very helpful, and Virgil then calls on Statius to explain the phenomenon. Statius gives a complex Scholastic description of the physical process of the formation of a human embryo, how that embryo develops through a vegetative and a sensitive (or animal) stage, until God breathes the intellective soul into the physically formed fetus. The spirit fuses with the physical body, Statius explains, as the sun’s heat fuses with the grape to form wine. On the death of the body the soul (with its vegetative, sensitive, and intellective faculties intact) falls to one shore or the other, ready for transport to Hell or Purgatory. Now since

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the soul is, in Scholastic terminology, the “form” of the body, it retains its formative power even when disembodied, and thus the air around the soul takes on the form of each individual—just as, Statius says, the air may be colored by a rainbow. That new shape accompanies the soul wherever it goes as its “shade.” Having been formed by the soul, the shade can see and hear, laugh and sigh, as the soul desires, just as the physical body did. Since the gluttons so strongly desired the fruit of the trees on the sixth terrace, their shades appeared emaciated, reflecting their soul’s hunger. By this time the pilgrims have reached the seventh terrace, the circle of the lustful. Here fire blasts out at them from the inner wall, while an updraft from the ledge pushes the flames upward, giving the pilgrims a narrow space to walk single file along the outer edge of the terrace. Terrified, Dante moves along, becoming aware that the shades on this level, burning within the flames, are singing the hymn Summae Deus clementiae (“God of supreme clemency”), a hymn that asks God to remove lust from the heart and to cleanse it with his purifying fire. At the end of the hymn the burning spirits all cry out, Virum non cognosco (“I know no man”), Mary’s response when told she would conceive and give birth to Christ. This example of Mary’s virginity is the first positive example opposed to the sin of lust. After the spirits sing through the hymn again, they shout out the second (classical) example of chastity: the virgin goddess Diana, who took to the woods to preserve her chastity and banished one of her followers, Helice, for being seduced by Jupiter. As the poets move along the outer edge of the terrace of the lustful at the beginning of Canto 26, the pilgrim’s body casts a shadow on the wall of flame, which draws the attention of the souls within the fire. One of the shades addresses the pilgrim, saying that the souls all thirst to know why he casts a shadow as if he is still alive. Before Dante can answer, a second group of shades approaches through the flames from the other direction. When the groups meet, the shades greet one another with brief and chaste kisses of peace. The two groups then call out the negative examples of lust: The newly arrived group shouts out, “Sodom” and “Gomorrah!” while the first group

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shouts the example of Parsiphaë’s unnatural lust for the bull. The two groups then move off, each in its own direction, as the penitents continue to chant their appropriate hymn. Now the souls who had been fascinated by the pilgrim’s body lean forward again to hear his words. He explains that he is indeed alive, and that a lady in Heaven has procured for him the grace to visit this realm to cure his spiritual blindness. Dante follows by asking the souls in the fire who they are, and who their counterparts in the second group are. After a moment of surprise (which Dante says fades quickly from the noble heart) the original questioner explains that the second group was made up of sodomites, who therefore cry out the examples of Sodom and Gomorrah to remind them of their own sin. The speaker’s companions, on the other hand, are guilty of heterosexual lust. Because such lust makes men like beasts, this group calls out the example of the bestial lust of Queen Parsiphaë. The speaker goes on to identify himself as GUIDO GUINIZELLI, the Bolognese poet whom Dante revered as the father of the sweet new style of love poetry Dante admired and advocated. Dante humbly offers to serve Guido in any way he can, and Guido asks why Dante has such love for him. Dante answers that it is because of Guido’s poetry, which he claims will be admired as long as the Tuscan language lives. Guido points ahead to another figure, whom he calls a “better craftsman of his mother tongue” (l. 117), praising this unnamed figure as a greater love poet than any. The poet should not be judged by reputation, Guido says: GIRAUT DE BORNELH is better known, but a lesser poet than the unnamed shade, just as Guittone d’Arezzo once was highly praised but now has slipped in public opinion. As Guido steps back into the flames, he asks Dante to pray for him. Finally Dante approaches the shade Guido has pointed out, politely asking his name. The shade responds in his native Provençal language (he is the only figure in the Comedy allowed to do so): He is the troubadour poet ARNAUT DANIEL (ARNAUD), who expresses sorrow for the sins that have led him to this level and asks that the pilgrim remember him when he arrives in Paradise. With those words Arnaut, too, steps back into the purifying fire.

The sun is about to set when the poets reach the Angel of Chastity, singing the beatitude Beati mundo corde (“Blessed are the pure in heart”). The angel tells them that before ascending farther, they must pass through the fire itself but advises them to listen to the words being sung beyond the wall of flames. Dante is terrified of the fire and holds back even as Virgil reminds him how he protected the pilgrim as they rode on the back of Geryon. But when Virgil assures Dante that only the wall of flame stands between him and Beatrice, the pilgrim is ready to brave the fire. Virgil goes first, asking that Statius follow behind the pilgrim. As they walk through the vicious heat of the flames, Virgil urges Dante on by talk of Beatrice. In the midst of the fire they hear a voice singing, guiding them to the other side, and as they emerge they realize it is an angel singing Venite, benedicti Patris mei (“Come ye blessed of my Father”). The angel’s brightness forces the pilgrim to turn his face away, as the angel urges the poets to make haste up the mountain while the light lasts. They hurry up the steep passageway cut into the rock until Dante’s shadow disappears, indicating that the sun has set, at which point each of the poets lies down on the step he occupies to spend the night. While gazing up at the bright stars, the pilgrim falls asleep for the third time on the mountain and for the third time experiences a prophetic dream just before dawn. In the dream Dante sees the biblical figures of Rachel and Leah. Leah addresses him, describing how her joy lies in making things with her hands, while her sister Rachel’s joy lies in contemplating her image in a mirror all day. Together the two clearly represent the active and contemplative lives. The pilgrim rises with the light, and Virgil encourages him with the knowledge that he will, today, be in Paradise. Dante climbs eagerly and, when they have reached the last step, Virgil addresses him again: Having been through the dark realm of eternal fire where he has gained a knowledge of sin, as well as the temporal realm of penitence where he has learned to redirect his will to the highest good, Dante no longer needs the intellectual guidance of Virgil. Dante is now free to follow his own will, until Beatrice meets him

Purgatorio here in the Earthly Paradise. Virgil crowns Dante the lord of himself. This is the last time Virgil will speak in the Comedy. Commentary When Canto 19 opens, it is just before dawn on Tuesday, Dante’s third day on the mountain. Thus his dream (like his earlier one in Canto 9) must be assumed to have prophetic power (indeed it looks forward to the sins he will encounter on the next three terraces). It is a dream that makes most sense when interpreted in the light of the discussion of love, sin, and free will in the last three cantos. In it the pilgrim sees a femmina balba (stammering woman), a hideously deformed woman who, as he continues to gaze at her, becomes seductively beautiful, singing an enticing song that holds the dreamer’s rapt attention. As Virgil interprets her later (l. 59), the woman is a Siren, like the mythological singers of classical legend who lured sailors to their deaths with their beauty and the hypnotizing charm of their song. He associates her with the sins punished on the three upcoming terraces—avarice, gluttony, and lust. She is thus (like the she-wolf in the Inferno) a symbol of the sins of incontinence. Like those sins, she is repulsive in her true nature but can appear desirable as she lures men to abandon the highest good for transient physical pleasures. In the dream a saintly woman appears to balance or counteract the femmina balba. This lady has been variously identified by commentators. Some believe she is Beatrice, some Saint Lucy (who rescued the pilgrim in his first dream), some the personification of Grace (which either Beatrice or Lucy could be). But if Dante intended either of these figures, he surely would have named them, as he does elsewhere. One interesting suggestion is that the lady represents Lady Philosophy. It is true that the dream recalls the pairing of the two allegorical figures of Fortune and Philosophy in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and that the femmina balba represents the worldly pleasures subject to Fortune’s power, but it seems inconsistent for Philosophy to have to call Reason (in the form of Virgil) to help her reveal the true nature of the femmina balba. The two figures—Virgil and the saintly lady—enact the

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process that Virgil had discussed in Canto 18 (ll. 61–66), where the faculty of human reason steps in between the will and its object to “defend the threshold of consent” (l. 63). It is Virgil who performs the function of reason in the dream. But it is the saintly lady who calls him—the point here might be something that Virgil (who, it must be remembered, is not saved) had left out of his explanation: the necessity of grace to help reason steer the will away from sin. Tearing through the Siren’s deceptive outer garments, reason penetrates to her true nature, represented by her foul “belly” (doubtless with sexual connotations), revealing her as false and as an abomination. His dream over, Dante leaves the terrace of sloth to the sound of the third beatitude: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5.4, NRSV). Readers have generally puzzled over the applicability of this beatitude to the sin of sloth. But among medieval theologians there was a long tradition of associating sloth with grief. Gregory the Great, in his commentary on the book of Job, listed the seven major sins but in place of sloth included tristitia (grief or sorrow). While most theologians used acedia, or sloth, where Gregory uses tristitia, sorrow was often seen as a branch or offshoot of the chief sin of sloth. Thomas Aquinas defines the sin of sloth as “an oppressive sorrow, which, to wit, so weighs upon man’s mind, that he wants to do nothing” and goes on to assert that a particular sin is sorrow concerning spiritual good—that is, sorrow over the rigors that a truly spiritual life might entail. Further Aquinas suggests that sorrow over a real evil may also lead to sinful sloth, “if it so oppresses man as to draw him away entirely from good deeds,” adding that this is what the apostle Paul intended in 2 Corinthians 2.7 when he warned those who repented not to be overburdened by paralyzing sorrow (ST 2.2, q. 35, a. 1). It may well be this last group that the angel’s beatitude refers to in this round: The slothful whose sorrow leads them to inaction must remember that they will indeed be comforted, and hence they should not be drawn away from zealous action for the good. As the poets enter the terrace of avarice, they observe the penitents lying facedown on the ledge,

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reciting the prayer Adhaesit pavimento anima mea (l. 73), or “my soul clings to the dust” (Psalm 119.25, NRSV). While nothing in this psalm deals directly with greed, Saint Augustine had written an influential commentary on it that read the psalm as a prayer rejecting the attachment to the things of the world. One of these prostrate souls makes the assumption that the poets, looking for the nearest way to the next level, must be penitents who are not required to stop on this level. For the first time the law of Purgatory is clarified: All penitents are not required to stop at each level but may pass over some of the circles if they are not guilty of the sin expiated there. This particular penitent, Adrian V, was a pope on earth, and he confesses his weakness for the sin of avarice. Once again Dante demonstrates the complex parallels and interconnections among his three canticles: In Canto 19 of the Inferno Dante encounters Pope Nicholas III, whose sin of simony is chiefly motivated by greed. Here in Canto 19 of the Purgatorio another greedy pope does penance for the same sin—but this time a pope who recognized the evils of papal greed and repented, and so is saved. But Pope Adrian does not assert his papal authority in Purgatory. When out of respect for his office the pilgrim kneels to him, Adrian reprimands him, telling him they are both simply servants. The scene alludes to an incident in the book of Revelation, when the angel of the Lord commands the visionary John to write down what he has seen, and John responds by kneeling to worship the angel. The angel stops him, saying, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you.” (19.10, NRSV). This is the spirit behind Adrian’s allusion to Matthew 22.24–30 (an incident also recounted in Mark 12.18–25 and Luke 20.27–35) when he quotes the words Neque nubent to the pilgrim. In the gospel the Sadducees (who do not believe in the resurrection of the body) pose to Jesus a problem that they assume to be a reductio ad absurdum of the idea of an afterlife: If a woman was consecutively married to seven brothers, who would be her husband in Paradise? Jesus rejects their frame, answering that “in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the

angels in heaven” (22.30, NRSV). Adrian’s use of this is metaphorical: Bishops (including the pope as bishop of Rome) were symbolically married to their diocese—as, for instance, nuns were symbolic brides of Christ. Both bishops and nuns wore wedding rings. But like other marriages, Adrian implies, that relationship is nullified in the afterlife. Here he is simply another penitent. Dante’s return to the imagery of the she-wolf and the greyhound in Canto 20 recalls the beginning of the Inferno, though here the greyhound almost certainly represents Emperor Henry VII. Because Canto 20 refers to Philip IV’s suppression of the Knights Templars (which took place in 1307) but does not mention Clement V’s justification of that act in 1312, it is assumed that Dante wrote this Canto between 1310 and 1311. In the autumn of 1310 Henry announced his intention of traveling to Italy, and this may be what Dante alludes to when in lines 14–15 he asks when the greyhound will come. According to Hugh Capet later in the canto, the three positive examples opposing the sin of greed are recited aloud as part of the daily prayers of the penitents, and they may be cried aloud by individual sinners as the spirit moves them (ll. 118– 123). The first example (ll. 20–24) is a reminder of Mary’s poverty, recalling how she gave birth to Jesus in a lowly stable (Luke 2.7). The second (ll. 25–27) is the life of Fabricius Caius Luscianus, a Roman consul in 282 B.C.E. and censor in 275. Because Fabricius refused to accept bribes or gifts as was customary in such positions, he died impoverished, and the state had to pay for his burial. The third example is Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra in Asia Minor during the reign of Constantine (ll. 31– 33). Nicholas was born wealthy but reputedly gave his fortune away to help the poor. Dante refers to a legend that relates how when an impoverished local nobleman faced the possibility of having to sell his three daughters into a life of prostitution because he could not provide dowries for them, Nicholas secretly tossed bags of gold into the girls’ windows on three successive nights, thus saving them from lives of depravity. Of the three examples only the third demonstrates generosity per se, the virtue customarily cited

Purgatorio as the counter to avarice. But not all Christians have the resources to perform the kind of dramatic act of generosity demonstrated by Nicholas. Dante provides examples that relate to three different conditions of life. In the first Mary patiently accepts the poverty she is born into, since her heavenly reward is much greater than any earthly treasure. In the second Fabricius rejects the possibility of wealth, since morality is far more valuable. In the third Nicholas’s generosity enables others to shun immorality. Thus all three examples demonstrate virtuous action opposed to avarice. Through Hugh Capet Dante also voices his political ire against the French monarchy, Hugh’s descendants. There had been 10 kings of France between Hugh’s death in 996 and the time of Dante’s composition of Purgatorio 20—four of them named Louis and four named Philip. Hugh saves his greatest condemnation for Philip IV, but first he attacks three of his descendants named Charles. The first is Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX. Louis had married the eldest daughter of Raymond Berenger IV, count of Provence, and Charles married the count’s youngest daughter, Beatrice (her father’s legal heir). Upon Count Raymond’s death the brothers claimed all of Provence as their wives’ dowry in 1246. At this point Hugh recounts three other French territorial thefts—Normandy in 1202 and Ponthieu and Gascony in 1295—repeating the ironic refrain “to make amends” with each case, implying that his descendants “make amends” for previous bad deeds by worse deeds. But Charles of Anjou’s worst actions, according to Hugh, took place in Italy. After the excommunication of Manfred, the heir to Frederick II’s kingdom of Naples and Sicily, Pope Urban IV called Charles to Italy to take Manfred’s throne. Charles overcame Manfred at Benevento in 1266 and subsequently defeated Manfred’s heir, Conradin at Tagliacozzo, in 1268—after which he had Conradin beheaded in the public square in Naples. Following popular legend Dante even has Hugh accuse Charles of poisoning Thomas Aquinas (l. 69)—an unfounded charge: The octogenarian Thomas had died in 1274 en route to the Council of Lyons, to which Pope Gregory X had summoned him.

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With line 70 Hugh begins to move from retrospective into prophecy, as he looks at the actions of a second Charles, Charles of Valois, brother of Philip IV. It was this Charles who was summoned to Italy by Boniface VIII in 1301, ostensibly to pacify Florence but in effect to put down any active opposition to the pope’s policies in that city. Charles allowed the Black Guelphs under Corso Donati to subjugate Florence, and to order the exile of all the Whites, including Dante himself. Dante presents this as prophecy in the Comedy’s fictional world of 1300 but was feeling the real effects of it even as he wrote the lines. The third Charles denounced by Hugh Capet is Charles of Anjou’s son and heir, Charles II (also called Charles the Lame). Defeated in 1284 in a naval battle against the Aragonese in 1284 (who executed 200 of his followers to avenge the death of Conradin), Charles was imprisoned by his enemies for three years. Though crowned king of Naples in 1289, he never regained control of the country and in 1305 was in such dire financial straits that he married his young daughter, Beatrice, to the much older Azzo VIII of Este for a reputedly very large sum of money. The story contrasts sharply with the earlier example of Saint Nicholas. But the worst of all his descendants’ crimes, Hugh makes clear, will be Philip IV’s attack on Pope Boniface VIII. Facing excommunication because of his taxation of the French clergy, Philip sent a force led by Guillaume de Nogaret and the Roman Sciarra Colonna to arrest the pope at his palace at Anagni. On September 7, 1303, Philip’s ruffians captured the 86-year-old pope and took him prisoner, threatening to put him in chains and drag him away to execution. Meanwhile they violated the cathedral treasury and ransacked the pope’s palace until the people of Anagni rose up in defense of Boniface and freed him. Boniface was taken to Rome, where a month later he died, reportedly of “hysterical seizures.” While Dante despised Boniface for his corruption and political ambitions, he believed that the office itself was sacred and saw the pope as Christ’s vicar on earth. A physical attack on the pope was in effect an attack upon the body of Christ himself. Thus he has Hugh call Philip a “second Pilate” (l. 91), crucifying the body of Christ

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between the two “thieves,” Guillaume de Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna. Hugh then suggests that Philip will go even further than Pilate had gone, by violating the Temple itself: In this he refers to Philip’s aforementioned brutal suppression of the Knights Templars. The Templars, an order of crusading knights who had become rich and powerful by the 14th century, were charged with heresy and other vile offenses, and Philip tortured a number of them into false confessions without the blessing of the church. Philip, who owed the Templars a great deal of money, gained much of their wealth for himself when he crushed the order, and when his puppet pope, the Frenchman Clement V, decreed the end of the order in 1312, the Templars’ grand master, Jacques de Molay, was burned to death in the presence of King Philip. Hugh concludes his discourse with the poets by citing the seven examples of punishment for avarice recited nightly in the prayers of the penitent on this level. Next to the examples of pride, these form the largest group of exempla in the Purgatorio. The examples include four classical illustrations—two at the beginning and two at the end—with three biblical examples in the middle. The first example is Pygmalion, brother of Dido (not to be confused with the Pygmalion who fell in love with the statue he created). Pygmalion had killed Dido’s husband, the Phoenician king Sichaeus, in the temple in order to obtain his great wealth. Dido, warned by Sichaeus in a dream, escaped with her husband’s treasure and founded the city of Carthage, leaving Pygmalion to pay for his murder and sacrilege. King Midas, the second classical example, was a king of Phrygia who had pleased the god Bacchus. Bacchus subsequently granted his wish to be able to turn things to gold by his touch. When he found that he was unable to eat or drink because all his food turned to gold, he asked the god to take back his gift (the story is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 11.85–145). The first biblical example is Achan, who against Joshua’s orders looted some of the treasure of Jericho that should have been dedicated to God. In retribution Joshua had Achan stoned to death, along with his family (Joshua 7.1–26). Next is the example of the early Christians Sapphira and her

husband, Ananias, who sold land in order to give the proceeds to the apostles but held back some of the money for themselves. When Saint Peter rebuked them for their deceit, they fell down dead (Acts 5.1–11). The final biblical example is from the apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees 3.1–40, where Heliodorus, a lieutenant of Seleucus IV, king of Syria, attempts to steal from the Temple treasury in Jerusalem. A horseman in gold armor nearly tramples him to death. The last two examples are classical. King Priam of Troy entrusted Polymnestor, king of Thrace, with the care of his youngest son, Polydorus, and a large part of the royal Trojan treasury. When Troy fell, Polymnestor killed Polydorus and kept the treasure. Ultimately Queen Hecuba blinded and killed Polymnestor for the betrayal and murder of her son (see Aeneid 3.19–68 and Metamorphoses 13.429–435). Finally Marcus Licinius Crassus (who with Caesar and Pompey had been part of the triumvirate who ruled Rome in 60 B.C.E.) was well known for his greed. Crassus became proconsul of Syria in 55 B.C.E. and was killed in battle with the Parthians in 53. Crassus’s severed head was presented to Hyrodes, king of the Parthians, who poured liquid gold into its mouth in scorn for Crassus’s thirst for gold. The canto ends on a note of suspense, as the pilgrim is frightened by the earthquake and puzzled by the singing of the Gloria in excelsis. We will learn in the following canto that these are the signs that a soul has completed its purgation and is ready to ascend to God—in this case the soul of the poet Statius. The Gloria recalls the angels’ song at Christ’s nativity. On the individual moral level of the allegory the rebirth of Statius’s soul reflects the incarnation of Christ, the birth that saved all humanity. The “thirst” Dante describes as Canto 21 begins, which he calls “the natural thirst which nothing satisfies” (l. 1), is a thirst for knowledge, which according to Aristotle’s Metaphysics (1.1.980a) is the natural desire of all human beings (a passage Dante had quoted at the beginning of the Convivio). The knowledge the pilgrim Dante wishes to gain is the reason for the earthquake on the mountain. In the third line Dante remarks that the

Purgatorio only thing that can satisfy this natural thirst is the water Jesus offered the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.5–15: the water of everlasting life. The connection between the thirst for knowledge and salvation is a matter of some debate among commentators, but it seems clear that divine revelation is the one thing that can satisfy the natural thirst for knowledge. Dante is about to receive such a revelation in the form of Statius—who will eventually replace Virgil (i.e., human reason) as Dante’s guide. It should be noted that the natural thirst for knowledge (and thus for salvation) contrasts sharply with the unnatural thirst for gold implied in the figure of Crassus at the end of the previous canto and also looks forward to the beatitude that will begin Canto 22. Canto 21 is divided into two roughly equal parts: The first half is concerned with the explanation of the earthquake of Canto 20 and a theological clarification of the penitents’ ability to recognize when they have fulfilled their purgation. The second half focuses on the figure of Statius. Before introducing himself, Statius responds to Virgil’s inquiry regarding the earthquake by asserting two points about the mountain. First, he says, no outside forces can cause change on the mountain, so it is not subject to the wet and dry vapors that cause storms on earth or that cause earthquakes when trapped in caves, according to medieval theory. Only the direct influence of Heaven affects the mountain, since in effect anything beyond Purgatory’s gate is part of the territory of Heaven. The soul rising from Purgatory already belongs to Heaven; therefore when it receives the penitent’s soul, “heaven takes from itself into itself” (l. 44). This internal motion, then, is the cause of the mountain’s trembling and the accompanying song of praise. Each soul, Statius tells the pilgrims, is likewise free from the influence of outside forces (as is the mountain itself). Individual souls recognize for themselves when they have completed their purgation. The explanation for this is rooted in Virgil’s earlier discourse on love in Canto 17. Within the penitent soul are two wills. One of these is what Scholastic philosophers called the “absolute will,” which desires only to ascend to God (the

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“natural love” of Canto 17, l. 94). The other is the “conditional will,” which (as in the “elective love” of the mind in Canto 17, l. 95) mistakenly desires other things, and so is out of accord with the absolute will. In Purgatory the conditional will must achieve harmony with the absolute will through penance. Recognizing its error, the conditional will in its desire for penance counters the soul’s absolute will to ascend to God and keeps the sinner’s shade fixed to its penance until, aligned perfectly with the absolute will, it feels its penance has been completed. The soul is purified when the will is no longer divided against itself. This picture of the nature of Purgatory, like many of the other details of this canticle, appears to be Dante’s invention. But it follows naturally from the allegory of individual penance that Purgatory suggests. For Dante penance is internal, and satisfaction occurs when the will to sin has been redirected to the natural objects of the will—God, virtue, and ultimate happiness. As for Statius the allusion to Christ begun with the Gloria of the previous Canto continues when he appears to the pilgrims. For the only time in the Purgatorio Dante explicitly compares a figure to the resurrected Christ when he notes the parallel between Statius’s meeting the pilgrims and Christ’s appearing to his two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24.13–16). As his disciples failed to recognize Christ, so Dante and Virgil fail to recognize Statius, or his status as a figure of Christ. But just as purgation is a form of rebirth, so the reborn soul of Statius parallels the resurrected body of Christ. The parallel becomes closer when Statius’s first words to the pilgrims—“May God . . . give you peace” (l.13)—echo Christ’s words to the disciples on his second postresurrection appearance in Luke 24.36–39. Statius will accompany the pilgrim and Virgil through the rest of their journey up the mountain. Why Dante introduced this second guide for the pilgrim at this point is worth asking. For most readers Statius seems a transitional figure. As Virgil represented human reason and the tradition of classical philosophy, and as Beatrice will represent divine love and grace, Statius is the link between pagan and Christian Rome—a classical writer who

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(in Dante’s inventive history) became a secret Christian who embodies the virtues of the classical world transformed by the Christian faith. When Virgil finds that he cannot answer the question about the nature of the human soul in Canto 25, it is Statius who will step in and, with understanding shaped by faith, give Dante the appropriate answer. Two details of Statius’s speech are particularly worth noting. First he remarks that he has spent more than 500 years on the ledge of avarice. We learn later that he was on the terrace of sloth for another 400 years. Since Status died in 96 C.E., 1,200 years before the date of the Comedy, he must have spent another 300 years on other terraces or in Ante-Purgatory. For the first time Dante presents a picture of how long a soul might wait on the mountain before it is purified. Second, although Statius’s main success as a poet occurred during the reign of Emperor Domitian, Dante has Statius place his career during the reign of Domitian’s brother, Titus, who ruled from 79 to 81 C.E. Statius praises the “good Titus” for having directed the siege of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. under his father, Vespasian, ultimately putting down the Jewish rebellion, conquering Jerusalem, and destroying the Temple. For medieval Christians (following a tradition originating with Jerome and PAULUS OROSIUS) this was seen as God’s punishment of the Jews for their role in the Crucifixion of Christ. The event is referred to in the same way by JUSTINIAN I in Paradiso 6, l. 92. Since in Dante’s political view the Roman Empire was the necessary vehicle for the establishment of Christian society, he viewed the destruction of the Temple by Rome as an important symbolic victory. Statius’s aborted embrace of Virgil that ends Canto 21 has generally been interpreted as a sign that shades are physically unable to embrace. But clearly this cannot be the case, since Sordello and Virgil were able to embrace twice in Canto 7. It makes more sense to interpret Virgil’s admonition of Statius in light of Pope Adrian’s chastising of Dante in Canto 19. In a scene Dante must have extrapolated from the end of the Thebaid, where Statius sends his poem off to adore the footprints of the Aeneid (Thebaid 12.810–19), Statius has already

expressed effusive admiration of Virgil, perhaps inappropriately suggesting that he would spend another year in Purgatory for the honor of meeting his idol. As Adrian cautioned Dante, Virgil implies to Statius that the two of them are shades, no longer in their earthly bodies, and here in Purgatory earthly honors no longer have meaning. When Statius says he had mistaken shadows for solid objects, he refers not to their shadowy bodies but to the transience of worldly fame and glory. The angel of the terrace of avarice recites a part of the fourth beatitude in the beginning of Canto 22. The entire beatitude would read Beati qui esuriunt et sitiunt justitiam—that is, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” But Dante leaves out the esuriunt (who hunger), saving that for the next terrace, the circle of gluttony. Dante felt he needed to share one of the beatitudes between two terraces not because he was running out of beatitudes—he never uses the beatitudes blessing the meek or blessing the persecuted. He seems rather to have considered the reference to thirst to be especially applicable to the sin of avarice. Any of the desires associated with the sins of incontinence might be described metaphorically as a thirst. Further the earlier example of Crassus (20, l. 116) might contribute to this metaphorical image of a thirst for gold. The contrasting thirst—the thirst for knowledge and for the water of eternal life alluded to at the beginning of Canto 21—is the thirst that is blessed, and that will be satisfied. The majority of Canto 22 concerns the two great changes in Statius’s life—his repentance for his prodigality and his conversion to Christianity— both of which he credits to Virgil. It was his reading of the Aeneid (3.56–57) that led Statius to recognize his sin. In this passage Aeneas stands at the grave of Polydorus, murdered by his father’s trusted friend Polymnestor for the Trojan treasure he had with him (this is the third mention of Polydorus in the Comedy, including Inferno 30, l. 19, and Purgatorio 20, l. 115, not to mention the allusion to this Aeneid passage in the Wood of Suicides in Inferno 13, ll. 47–49; it was clearly an important source for Dante). Aeneas here laments the extremes to which the thirst for riches drives human beings.

Purgatorio Commentators have been concerned that Aeneas’s words condemn only avarice, not Statius’s specific sin of prodigality. Just how Virgil’s condemnation of avarice causes Statius to repent his prodigality is a much debated point. But it should be remembered that Dante had already made the point in Canto 67 of the Inferno that both hoarding and wasting involve an unnatural attachment to the gifts of Fortune. Aristotle had stressed the idea that vice involves a deviance from the mean between two extremes. With this in mind Thomas Aquinas had addressed both covetousness and prodigality as sins opposed to the virtue of liberality (ST 2.2, q. 118–119), and thus saw them as closely related: In morals vices are opposed to one another and to virtue in respect of excess and deficiency. Now covetousness and prodigality differ variously in respect of excess and deficiency. Thus, as regards affection for riches, the covetous man exceeds by loving them more than he ought, while the prodigal is deficient by being less careful of them than he ought. (ST 2.2, q. 119, a. 1)

One must imagine that Statius, versed in classical philosophy, could have drawn a similar conclusion after thinking about Virgil’s words. It should be noted that there is no historic evidence of Statius’s prodigality. In fact his contemporary Juvenal, whom Virgil credits with giving him news in Limbo of Statius’s admiration, asserts in his Seventh Satire that Statius was so poor that he would have starved to death without a wealthy patron. Dante may not have known this text—he seems to have had little direct acquaintance with Juvenal’s poetry, citing him only secondhand in his works. Or, if Dante did know Juvenal’s poem, he might have posited that Statius had impoverished himself through prodigality. In any case Dante uses Statius’s sin to demonstrate the complexity of avarice. As his positive examples of Mary and the nativity, Fabricius, and Saint Nicholas in Canto 20 had demonstrated three different positive responses to wealth, so Dante implies here that there are a variety of negative responses as well. Statius says that his conversion to the Christian faith was also sparked by Virgil. Virgil led him

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to Mount Parnassus (home of the Muses, hence poetry) and to God (thus implying a close connection between poetry and grace). It was Virgil’s reference in his Fourth Eclogue to the birth of a child from Heaven who would create a new golden age (a passage commonly interpreted by medieval Christians as a prophecy of the birth of Christ) that led Statius to sympathize with the new Christian preachers in Rome and, ultimately, to be baptized. Though the Thebaid is dedicated to Domitian, notorious persecutor of Christians, Statius claims that by the time he had “brought the Greeks to Theban streams” (22, l. 88)—that is, by the seventh book of the Thebaid, when the exiled Theban troops arrive at the Ismenus and Asopus, the rivers of Thebes, to begin their attack—he had already received Christian baptism. Virgil, eternally consigned to Limbo, seems to have been unaware of the implications of what he had been divinely inspired to write in the Fourth Eclogue. Statius compares him to one who walks in the dark, holding a light behind him for others to follow. Commentators have seen this metaphor as an allusion to a sermon of Saint Augustine’s in De symbolo ad catechumenos, 4: Augustine, in an apostrophe to the Jews, describes them as “carrying in your hands the lantern . . . of the Law, that you might show the way to others, while you lead yourselves into the shadows” (qtd. in Durling’s edition, p. 376). Thus for Dante Virgil, like the Jews, is in the ironic position of having access to the truth and turning his back to it. From this point on Virgil will appear a less and less reliable guide for Dante. However, the value of Virgil’s poetry is still implicit in this canto. Beginning here and extending over the next few cantos, Dante will explore the value of poetry, including the poetry of classical pagans, in the Christian world—a controversial topic in the Middle Ages. Dante portrays himself following behind Virgil and Statius and learning about poetry from them as they pass to the sixth terrace. Given what he has already depicted in this canto, one must assume that what he is absorbing about poetry has to do with its moral and ethical value. Allegorically Dante implies that the Christian reader can learn important lessons about morality by reading such ancient texts as the

148 Purgatorio Aeneid and the Thebaid—or, for that matter, modern texts like his Comedy. Canto 22 concludes as the pilgrims arrive on the terrace of gluttony. The tree that stands immediately before them clearly alludes to the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis, even issuing a warning (reminiscent of the prohibition of Genesis 2.15– 17) that neither the fruit of the tree nor the water that feeds it is to be touched. The tree is even shaped in a way that makes climbing impossible, with smaller branches at the bottom and larger branches at the top. The voice from the tree shouts out five exempla of abstinence or temperance, the virtue opposed to gluttony. The first, of course, is from the life of Mary. The other four alternate between classical and biblical examples. The Marian example involves the marriage feast at Cana (John 2.1–10), already alluded to in Purgatorio 13.29 as an example of charity. Here it is used as an exemplum of temperance: Mary, concerned for others rather than her own appetite, uses her mouth to pray for charity for others, rather than to consume food and drink. The second example of temperance involves the women of ancient Rome, who reputedly drank no wine but were satisfied with water. Thomas Aquinas alludes to this reputation (ST 2.2, q. 149, a. 4), citing Valerius Maximus as his authority. Aquinas was making the point that temperance was more requisite in some individuals than others, and he saw intemperate women as particularly vulnerable to sin. This example is coupled with the biblical figure of Daniel, who in Daniel 1.3–20 sets an example for other Jews in the Babylonian court of King Nebuchadnezzar by refusing to defile himself with food or drink from the king’s table. Like the Roman matrons, Daniel is in a special position in which temperance is particularly important. But Daniel’s deliberately chosen action goes beyond them and earns a reward from God—the ability to interpret dreams. Dante takes his fourth example (another corporate one) from well-known literary depictions of the first age of men, the classical golden age, particularly as described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 1.89–112 and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy 2, meter 5. Here people are portrayed as living in

harmony with nature and as not having learned to till the ground or cook their food. Thus they were not corrupted by gluttonous desires and lived contentedly on acorns, berries, and spring water. This example is coupled with the biblical figure of John the Baptist, who (by choice, not necessity) lived in the wild and consumed only locusts and wild honey (Matthew 3.4). As it did Daniel, voluntary abstinence wins John glory with God. The prayer of the gluttons whose emaciated shades pass the pilgrims in Canto 23 is taken from Psalm 50 (modern 51), the popular psalm known as the Miserere and cited already as the source of the song of the indolent in Canto 5. Verse 15, the passage the gluttons sing, reads, “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise” (NRSV). Through their prayer the gluttons emphasize that the most virtuous function of the human mouth is not gluttonous eating and drinking, but rather voicing praise to God. In this the penitents recall the example of Mary from the previous canto, where her actions at the wedding in Cana are explicitly used to demonstrate her temperance and her choice to move her lips in prayer rather than in gluttony (Canto 22, ll. 142–144). From this Dante moves to an allusion to another Jewish woman named Mary: The penitents, he says, call to mind the starving Jews at the siege of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. According to the account of the siege in Flavius Josephus’s The Jewish War (6.3), a young woman named Mary—driven to anger and madness by starvation during the Roman Titus’s siege of the city—killed, cooked, and ate her own nursing baby. That horrific act sets up this Mary as the opposite of the Virgin, her grim meal a grotesque parody of the Eucharist, her people the damned opposites of the Christians of Purgatory, her doomed Jerusalem (paying, as Dante had stressed in Canto 21, for the Jews’ part in the Crucifixion) the converse of the Heavenly Jerusalem toward which the skeletal shades are marching. In the gaunt faces of those skeletal penitents Dante claims to be able to read the word omo (man). This claim generally confuses modern readers, but Dante knew his audience would be familiar with the popular medieval notion that God had deliberately identified his human creation by designing

Purgatorio the face in such a way that one could read in it the word for “man”: The round sockets of the eyes clearly formed two o’s, while the arched eyebrows and the cheekbones, together with the medial line made by the nose, formed an m. Just why God had designed the faces of all humanity with the Latin language and alphabet in mind is a question that seems not to have occurred to anyone at the time. In a strange way this description of the penitents’ faces draws attention to the careful design with which God wrought the features of the human face and once more calls to our attention the misuse of one of those features—the mouth—by the gluttons on this terrace. Dante’s glad meeting with Forese Donati is one of the longest such encounters in the Comedy, running to some 200 lines between this canto and the next. His greeting—“What grace has been bestowed on me!” (l. 42)—is reminiscent of the delighted cry of Dante’s other Florentine friend BRUNETTO LATINI—“How marvelous!”—in Canto 15 of the Inferno (l. 24). (Other echoes of the Brunetto encounter will occur throughout this conversation.) Forese’s praise of his wife, Nella (a compliment by which Dante may have been trying to make up for some insulting language he had used toward Nella in his scurrilous tenzone with Forese in the early 1290s), reminds us again of the importance of intercessory prayer for the souls in Purgatory. But more memorable in this section is Forese’s condemnation of the immodest habits of the women of Florence. He compares them to the Barbacini, a semisavage tribe living in the mountains of Sardinia who in Dante’s time refused to recognize Pisan sovereignty over the region. The Barbacini were said to live like animals, and their women were rumored to be particularly lascivious and to go about bare breasted. Forese’s prophecy that the loose women of Florence would be attacked from the pulpit probably refers to sumptuary laws (laws governing the wearing of clothing) that were enacted in 1310 in the Constitutions of Florence by Antonio d’Orso, bishop of the city, prohibiting on pain of excommunication the wearing of clothing that exposed any part of the female torso. As for his prediction of the disaster that would befall the city by the time the babies of 1300 had reached puberty

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and begun to grow beards (that is, within about 15 years), one could choose from a number of possibilities: Perhaps Forese refers to the occupation of the city by Charles of Valois in 1301, or to the famine that assailed the city in 1302, or to the interdict placed on Florence in 1303. However, because of the implied 15-year span, many commentators believe that the disaster referred to is Pisa’s devastating defeat of the Florentine Guelphs at the Battle of Montecatini on August 29, 1315. Whatever the allusion, two points seem to be implicit in Forese’s prophesy. First, in the implied judgment of God against the city, it links Florence to the conquered Jerusalem alluded to earlier in the canto. Second, the loose morals of the Florentine women contrast with the strict behavior of the matrons of Rome alluded to in the exempla of gluttony (Canto 22, l. 145). If the strict morals of Rome made it the fitting instrument to conquer the corrupt Jerusalem that had crucified the Savior, Forese’s speech makes it clear where Florence stands by comparison. One last point of controversy in Canto 23 concerns Dante’s comment to Forese that the memories of times they spent together must be painful for him (ll. 115–117), as it was from that life (the dark wood of Inferno 1) that Dante was rescued and sent on this journey. Some commentators have assumed that Dante is specifically referring to the tenzone in which the two had engaged. This was a poetic exchange that involved six SONNETs (three apiece by Dante and Forese) in which they scurrilously insulted each other. The poems are filled with charges of gluttony, sexual impotency, and other shortcomings and abound in obscene double-entendres, often implying sodomy. In one poem Dante suggests that Nella freezes at night because Forese is unwilling or unable to perform sexually with her. It may be that the pilgrim is here regretting the misuse of his poetic gifts in such a vulgar manner, particularly now that, in the presence of Virgil and Statius, he has had a glimpse of the moral function that poetry ideally serves. On the other hand other commentators suggest that Dante is simply referring to a time when, as young men, Dante and Forese might have regularly caroused together, eating and drinking to excess, in a manner that has landed Forese here on this level of Purgatory.

150 Purgatorio The majority of Canto 24 is devoted to the pilgrim’s encounter with the Lucchese poet Bonagiunta Orbicciani. There are at least two good reasons why Dante should choose Bonagiunta for this important exchange concerning love poetry. First, Dante had pointed out what he considered the deficiencies of Bonagiunta’s poetic language in De vulgari eloquentia (1.13), calling it “municipal” rather than courtly. Second, Bonagiunta had criticized one of Dante’s idols, Guido Guinizelli, for using learned imagery in his love poetry. Bonagiunta, then, is the perfect choice for Dante to depict as gaining a realization, through the clear eyes of eternity, of precisely what his poetry lacked compared to Dante’s. Bonagiunta first delivers his prophecy about the young woman of Lucca. He stumbles over his words at first—perhaps this is Dante’s way of suggesting the inarticulate nature of Bonagiunta’s verse. Then he mentions that the lady will leave Dante with a good opinion of the city of Lucca. Many commentators have read this as a suggestion that she and Dante shared a platonic love relationship. The woman has not been absolutely identified, though some believe she is Gentucca de Ciucchino Morla, who could have known Dante when he stayed in Lucca in about 1306–08 during his exile. At that time she was married to Buonaccorso di Fondara, but there is no suggestion of a physical relationship between her and the poet. In fact it is possible that Bonagiunta’s allusion to this woman is a transition that will lead into the discussion of unselfish love that permeates the discussion of poetry that follows. The poem Bonagiunta refers to—Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”)—is the first of the three canzoni central to the theme and structure of Dante’s Vita nuova. In the context of that work Dante sees the poem as the major turning point in his love of Beatrice, and of his love poetry: As his love of her changes from selfish, erotic, and physical to something pure and unselfish, so his poetry changes from focusing on his own suffering and desire to generous and unsullied praise of Beatrice herself (a technique he seems to have learned largely from Guinizelli).

Dante’s initial response to Bonagiunta is the single most debated tercet in the entire Comedy. In Musa’s translation it reads thus: I said to him, “I am one who, when Love inspires me, takes careful note and then, gives form to what he dictates in my heart.” (Canto 24, ll. 52–54)

While some believe that the “love” referred to here is the allegorical god of love depicted in Dante’s earlier love poetry, surely the lines must be read in the context of the discourses on love and will that have formed the central part of the Purgatorio. The whole task of a penitent in Purgatory is to harmonize his conditional will (that “mental love” of Canto 17 by which human beings seek partial goods through their free choice) with the absolute will that follows natural love and seeks only the highest good. The word inspires (spirare, or “to breathe,” in the original) is used again in Purgatory 25, l.71 and in Paradiso 10, ll.1–2 and in both cases refers specifically to the breath of God. It follows that Dante here refers to the natural love inspired by God himself for God himself, and that the ideal poetry is that which follows the dictates of that natural love. His love of Beatrice is a love of God through Beatrice, one of the partial goods of God’s good creation and God’s agent to lead him to salvation. Bonagiunta’s response has been nearly as controversial as Dante’s three-line poetic manifesto. The central question involves the application of the term Dolce stil novo (sweet new style). Is Bonagiunta referring to poets like Cavalcanti and Guinizelli as well as Dante himself (since he has not mentioned those two poets as being held back by the “knot” that restrained him and all the poets of the Tuscan and Sicilian schools of poetry); or does Bonagiunta mean to apply the label only to Dante himself? Dante does not seem to want to include Cavalcanti and Guinizelli among the unenlightened poets, since their verse inspired and shaped his own. In that sense they are part of the “sweet new style” in its broadest application. But Dante implies that his Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore is a significant break from all previous poetry, even his own. Further Bonagiunta speaks of the “sweet new

Purgatorio style” that he is currently hearing (l. 57), implying that Dante’s very speech reflects the style of his poetry. This suggests, first, that the Dolce stil novo involves naturalness of expression rather than intricately wrought language—a “naturalness” that relates directly to the natural love that Dante says directs his poetry. Second, it suggests that the poetry of the Comedy itself, the lofty goal of which is the expression not of erotic but of divine love, is the purest and most immediate example of the kind of poetry Dante regards as Dolce stil novo. In an extended metaphor drawn from falconry Bonagiunta speaks of the “knot” that held him, Giottone d’Arezzo, and Giacomo da Lentino back. The knot refers to the falcon’s leash that prevents him from flying from his perch. In lines 58–60 Bonagiunta speaks of the penne with which Dante the poet follows love. Penne may mean “pens”— that is, Dante takes down the dictation of love with his pen in order to create his poetry; or it may mean feathers—through his verse Dante takes flight like a falcon, flying toward love. It is a flight Bonagiunta was prevented from making. But what specifically is the “knot” he refers to? Bonagiunta must refer to the attitudes toward love expressed by these earlier poets. If their poetry was self-centered and erotic, it was surely a reflection of their own attitudes toward love. That love—selfish and greedy—was the kind of misdirected mental love sought by the conditional will. It is no accident that Bonagiunta is on the terrace of gluttony when the pilgrim meets him: Like the love expressed in his verse, gluttony is a vice caused by the excessive love of worldly things. At this point the positive example of the Virgin at the marriage feast in Cana and the penitents’ prayer of Labia mea Domine (“O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise”) in the last canto are more clearly in focus. The “sweet new style” is poetry through which the mouth declares the praise of the Lord. This is the use to which the poet Bonagiunta should have put his mouth, rather than drunkenness and gluttony, and the self-centered love poetry that he uttered. The second prophecy of the canto is from the mouth of Forese Donati and concerns his brother, Corso, leader of the Black Guelphs of Florence and hence Dante’s bitter enemy, who conspired with

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Boniface VIII and Charles of Valois to send the French army into Florence. Forese calls him “the guiltiest of them all” and says that before long he sees Corso being dragged off to Hell by a runaway beast. In fact Corso was condemned to death by his own party in 1308. There are differing versions of his death, but he seems to have fallen or thrown himself from his horse and been dragged by the horse’s stirrup until one of his captors thrust a lance through Corso’s throat. The beast that drags Corso in Forese’s prophecy may be this horse, though Dante may also be drawing on the folklore motif of a demonic beast carrying sinners off to Hell. It is also possible that the beast, metaphorically, represents Pope Boniface. Forese’s departure from Dante is memorable: As Forese rushes to catch up to his band of penitents, Dante compares him to a cavalry soldier galloping ahead of his company to win honor as the first to attack. One is immediately put in mind of Brunetto Latini, likewise racing to catch up with the group that has left him behind to converse with the pilgrim, and whom Dante compares with the winner of the footrace in Verona (Inferno 15, ll. 121–124). Brunetto and Forese greet Dante in a similar delighted manner, both present the pilgrim with a prophecy, and both exit as victorious individuals racing to catch their groups. Dante has difficulty recognizing both of them—Brunetto because of his burned features and Forese because of his emaciated face. Both are Florentines with whom Dante was close—Brunetto as a father figure and Forese as a brother figure. One, however, is in Hell, and the other is saved. Dante invites the comparison. The chief differences between the two figures, it seems, are their attitude toward their sins and their posthumous memories on earth as Dante presents them: Brunetto never mentions his sin at all but seems preoccupied with his own literary reputation, asking that Dante remember his Trésor, in which he hopes to live on. Forese’s memory is kept by his loving wife, whose prayers have sped him through Ante-Purgatory. And while the memory of Forese’s sinful life may cause him pain, he is now on the road to Heaven. Thus Forese recognizes a special grace in his meeting with Dante (Purgatorio 23, l. 42), while Brunetto sees only that it is “marvelous” (Inferno 15, l. 24).

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The canto ends as Dante encounters the second tree on this level, around which penitents gather like begging children, suggesting the ultimately infantile nature of gluttony. The first example of gluttony punished is taken from classical mythology. Ixion, king of the Lapiths, had developed a strong lust for the goddess Juno. Jupiter fashioned a cloud into the shape of Juno, and the unwitting Ixion slept with the cloud-woman (who came to be known as Nephele). From this union the Centaurs were born. Ixion’s human son was Pirithous, friend and companion of Theseus. The Centaurs were invited to the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia but became so drunk that they attempted to carry off the bride and other women at the feast. Theseus and Lapithae proceeded to slaughter the Centaurs for their outrage (Metamorphoses 12.215–535). The second example of the ill effects of gluttony is the biblical story of Gideon (Judges 7.1–4). So that the Israelites will not attribute their victory over the Midianites to their own power but rather to God’s, the Lord tells Gideon to lead his army to a stream to drink. Those warriors who abandon themselves to their thirst and put their faces directly into the water to drink are to be sent back to their tents. Those who show more self-control by cupping their hands and lifting the water to their mouths are chosen to go to the war (presumably they would not be carried away in the heat of the battle). Of 10,000 troops, only 300 are chosen to fight with Gideon, and these win the fight. This passage was often cited in the Middle Ages as an example of what might be lost through gluttony. The beatitude that ends Canto 24 is the second part of the beatitude from the terrace of avarice. Here the angel pronounces blessing on those who hunger after righteousness and who do not yield to their excessive appetites (ll. 151–154). The appetites referred to may be anything desired by the conditional will—excessive food or drink, the selfish love expressed in Bonagiunta’s poetry, the sodomy embraced (and not repented) by Brunetto. The righteousness hungered after must include Forese’s love of his virtuous wife and sister, and his condemnation of his brother and the brazen women of Florence, as well as Dante’s love of Beatrice and, through her, the highest good.

Canto 25 is concerned chiefly with the discussion of Dante’s question as to how the incorporeal bodies of the gluttonous shades can become emaciated—a question that concerns the essential nature of the aerial bodies in Hell and Purgatory. Virgil’s initial analogies are not much help. He alludes first to Ovid’s story of Meleager (Metamorphoses 8.260–525), the son of Oeneus and Althaea, king and queen of Calydon. At her son’s birth the Fates place a branch into the fire on Althaea’s hearth and announce that when branch has been consumed by the fire, Meleager’s life will likewise be spent. On hearing the prophecy, Althaea takes the branch out of the fire and hides it. Years pass, and the grown Meleager falls in love with Atalanta. For her he slays the great Calydonian Boar and presents her with its skin. But his mother’s brothers, Plexippus and Toxeus, take the skin back from Atalanta, and the outraged Meleager kills them. When Althaea sees her brothers’ bodies, she takes vengeance on her son by finding the branch and throwing it on the fire. As the branch is burned away, Meleager’s life ebbs from him. The point of the story for Virgil is apparently that the relationship between the two apparently incongruous things—the stick and Meleager’s life—parallels that between the soul and its airy body. Virgil’s second analogy—the body reflected in a mirror—is clearer. As the image in a mirror seems unrelated to the object being reflected but in fact is completely dependent on it, so the aerial body is essentially a reflection of the soul. Still this does not answer Dante’s question but merely describes the aerial soul with a simple analogy. The fact that Virgil hands the question off to Statius has been seen by some commentators as merely a courtesy extended to the poets’ new companion, but most consider the act more significant. Virgil’s authority, which has been diminishing since the pilgrims’ entry into Purgatory, will soon be superseded by that of Beatrice, and the Christian figure of Statius will ease that transition. On an allegorical level Virgil as human reason has reached the limits of his knowledge with questions about the soul. This question can only be answered with the aid of divine revelation, available to the Christian Statius but not the pagan Virgil.

Purgatorio    153 Statius’s answer is particularly difficult for modern readers because of its foundation in esoteric medieval scientific theories. It falls into three sections: the explanation of the generation of the human embryo (ll. 37–60), based chiefly on Aristotelian philosophy; the generation of the human soul (ll. 61–78), based on Scholastic philosophy but derived ultimately from the Bible; and finally the nature and formation of the aerial bodies after death (ll. 79–108), which is almost completely Dante’s own invention. Aristotle saw conception as the mingling of blood, and this is the notion, transmitted to the Middle Ages chiefly through the Arabic commentator Avicenna, that Statius outlines: Sperm is blood “perfected” in the heart, and in this perfected blood provided by the father is the formative power that mixes with the passive blood from the mother and forms it into the material body of the potentially human embryo. The active blood from the father develops into the soul of the fetus, first the vegetative soul (that which gives life), then the sensitive soul (that which allows movement and awareness). The fetus is now ready for the development of the intellectual soul, which makes it human. Before describing the manner in which the fetus acquires humanity, Statius takes time to refute the controversial Arabic philosopher Averroës, whom he calls “a mind wiser than yours” (l. 63). Averroës, finding no human organ in which it could reside, posited that the intellectual capacity, what Aristotle called the “possible intellect,” was a single universal phenomenon shared by all men, and not existing within individuals. It followed from this doctrine that there was no immortality of the individual soul (and therefore no judgment). Statius, however, provides the more orthodox explanation (following that of Albertus Magnus) that when the fetus has fully developed its vegetative and sensitive souls, God himself breathes into it a spirit that forms the intellectual soul (containing the possible intellect), which draws the other two souls into itself to form a single human soul. It is this soul that differentiates human beings from all other created things and that confers on humans the intellectual powers of speech, understanding, memory, and will. It should be noted that Dante’s

explanation is perfectly orthodox: It denies the position of Averroës on the one hand and on the other the position of the Greek Church, which held that the rational soul was present in the human embryo at conception. The Roman Church based its position on the description of God’s creation of Adam, where God first formed the body and only afterward breathed into it the living spirit that made it human (Genesis 2.7). After this lengthy prelude Statius finally turns to the question Dante had asked. The aerial body, he explains, is produced in much the same manner as the material human body. When the soul leaves the physical body at death, it still maintains the original formative principle that originated from the father. As it had earlier worked on the passive maternal blood to form the fetus, so after death it finds itself in a specific place—the damned soul on the shore of the Acheron, the saved on the shore

The Seventh Circle—the Lustful, from Canto 25 of the Purgatorio, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

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of the Tiber to await transport to Purgatory—and begins to work on the surrounding air. As sunlight forms a rainbow in the humid air, so the formative power of the soul produces a shade that has all the senses and powers of its human body. The aerial body, however, responds to the inner state of the soul. Therefore the craving for food experienced by the shades on the terrace of the gluttonous is directly reflected in their outward appearance. As noted previously, the aerial body and its properties are Dante’s own invention, necessitated by the demands of his narrative. On Judgment Day, as taught by orthodox theologians, the universal resurrection would occur and souls would be reunited with their earthly bodies. In the meantime however in order for Dante to witness the punishments of the damned and the penance of the souls in Purgatory, the souls must be depicted in a physical form, and here Dante uses accepted medieval scientific theory to justify his invention. Statius’s discourse completed, the canto ends as the pilgrims reach the level of the lustful. The hymn that the souls sing from the flames is a very ancient one, dating to at least the 10th century. The hymn, Summae Deus clementiae (“God of supreme clemency”), is better known today as Summa parens clementiae (“Parent of supreme clemency”). The third stanza of the hymn specifically asks that God burn away sinful lusts: Our loins and liver, diseased, Burn out with suited fire, So may they ever be girt up All sinful lusts put away. (trans. from Durling ed., 435)

The two examples of chastity, the virtue opposed to lust, include, of course, one from the life of the Virgin, followed by a classical example. The first quotes Mary’s words—virum non cognosco (“I know no man”)—in response to Gabriel’s annunciation that she would give birth to the son of God (Luke 1.34). The words are a reminder of the virgin birth itself but also of the generally accepted belief that Mary was in fact a perpetual virgin. The second example holds up the goddess Diana, who lived as a huntress in the woods in order to preserve her virgin state and who exiled the nymph Helice

(also known as Callisto) from her retinue after the nymph, “poisoned” by Venus’s lust, became the lover of Jove. According to Ovid the angry Juno transformed Helice into a bear, and Jove, in recompense, placed Helice in the heavens as the Great Bear (Metamorphoses 2.401–530). Canto 26 introduces the two types of sinners doing penance on this level and presents the two negative examples of the sin of lust. It also portrays two of the poets Dante most admired. The sodomites are identified later by Guinizelli as those whose sins were the same as that for which Caesar was called “Queen.” This alludes to a story told by Suetonius in De vita Caesarum (“Life of Caesar” 1.11.9) alleging that Caesar had committed sodomy with King Nicomedes of Bithynia, after which his troops greeted him with shouts of Regina (i.e., “Queen”). The sodomites move along the terrace in the flames clockwise, to the left, and so meet the first group of sinners going in the other direction. The sodomites are the only shades in Purgatory who travel this way, a fact of some significance, suggesting that this group of sinners moves in an unnatural direction. When the two groups meet, they exchange brief and chaste kisses with one another, after the manner prescribed by the apostle Paul, who advises the Christians of Rome, “Greet one another with a holy kiss” (Romans 16.16, NRSV). Clearly this is intended to contrast with the lustful kisses these sinners engaged in while alive. The examples that the sinners cry out are intended to represent their particular variety of lust. The sodomites cry out the names of Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities destroyed by God with fire from Heaven in Genesis 19. The cities were destroyed because of their sins, and standard interpretation was that their chief sin was sodomy— when two angels visit Lot in the city of Sodom, the inhabitants surround his house, saying, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them” (Genesis 19.5). The heterosexual penitents shout another example, that of Pasiphaë and the bull. The daughter of Apollo, Pasiphaë was the wife of King Minos of Crete. She became infatuated with a black bull that Poseidon had given Minos, and she persuaded

Purgatorio Daedalus to construct a replica of a cow, made of wooden ribs covered by a cowhide. Pasiphaë hid herself within the wooden cow and allowed the bull to penetrate her. As a consequence of this union she gave birth to the Minotaur. The story was told both in Virgil’s Aeneid (6.24–26) and in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (7.131–137). Pasiphaë’s bestiality seems an odd example for the presumably “natural” lust of the heterosexual penitents. Guinizelli explains that those in his group may not have committed unnatural sexual acts, but their unbridled lust exceeded the bounds of appropriate sexual behavior (as, for example, the laws of marriage), and therefore they were like beasts in their lusts (ll. 82–87). Dante’s putting the homosexual and heterosexual penitents together is a particular difficulty in this canto. In the Inferno Dante had placed the lustful in the first circle (and included only heterosexual lovers)—there lust was the first of the sins of incontinence. Sodomites, on the other hand were deeper in Hell, with the violent, their sin being classified as violence against Nature. Here in Purgatory the two are punished together. This does not represent a change of attitude on Dante’s part, but rather different organizing principles in Hell and Purgatory: Hell is structured according to classical Aristotelian ethics, while Purgatory is organized according to the Christian conception of the seven deadly sins. The only one of these categories of sin into which sodomy could logically fit was lust. The scene with Guido Guinizelli marks the culmination of a succession of meetings that began with Statius in Canto 20, in which Dante explores the nature and purpose of poetry, and his own debt to and relationship with poets of previous generations. Here Dante anticipates Guinizelli’s identification of himself and alludes to Guido’s most famous poem in line 72 when he mentions that surprise lasts only briefly in the noble heart—Guinizelli’s best-known canzone was called “Al cor gentil” (“The Gentle Heart”). Having depicted Bonagiunta recognizing the superiority of Dante’s “sweet new style” in Canto 24, Dante here acknowledges Guinizelli as his poetic father and the ultimate source of that style. Bonagiunta had attacked Guinizelli’s poetry, blaming him for changing the pleasant style

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of love poetry with obscure language. Guinizelli answered in a sonnet condemning as foolish one who believed that he alone had the truth. It is likely because of this exchange that Dante utilizes Bonagiunta (rather than the better-known Guittone d’Arezzo or Giacomo da Lentino, to whom Bonagiunta alludes) as the representative of the earlier, inferior love poetry in Italian. Guinizelli had died in 1276 and therefore has progressed this far on Mount Purgatory fairly quickly—the result, he says, of having repented long before his death. Having already been purged of the sin of pride, Guido deflects the pilgrim’s adulation, pointing to Arnaut Daniel as the “better craftsman” in the “mother tongue.” The pilgrim has had no difficulties earlier extolling his own poetic accomplishment—see, for example, his selfcongratulation in the canto on the thieves in the Inferno, a canto that occurs at about the same point in the Inferno as this one does in the Purgatorio (25, ll. 94–99). Now, however, the pilgrim seems also to have been purged of pride, acknowledging that Guinizelli has also influenced Dante’s “betters.” By this it seems likely Dante refers to Cavalcanti and perhaps CINO DA PISTOIA, two of Dante’s contemporaries whom some scholars identify as also having written in the “sweet new style.” Dante had already expressed his admiration for Arnaut Daniel, the 12th-century Provençal troubadour, in De vulgari eloquentia. Arnaut wrote in a particularly difficult style (known as trobar clus), and Guinizelli (echoing the words of his sonnet to Bonagiunta) says that they are “fools” who think Giraut de Bornelh a better poet (ll. 118–120). Dante had previously expressed admiration for Giraut as well (in De vulgari eloquentia). But Giraut is cited here probably because he was well known for his verses in the clear and simple poetic style known as trobar leu. Recall that Bonagiunta had criticized Guinizelli for his obscure verses. Guinizelli praises the troubadour who, as he did, wrote in the difficult style rather than the more popular poet who, as Bonagiunta, wrote in a more common manner. Guinizelli then denigrates the fickleness of popular reputation. Just as Oderisi of Gubbio in Canto 11 had commented how Giotto was now recognized as a greater painter than Cimabue, whom

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popular opinion had crowned before, so Guinizelli extols the superiority of Arnaut over Giraut—and adds, in passing, that Guittone d’Arezzo’s reputation has now justly declined. The “mother tongue” Guinizelli mentions has been the subject of some scholarly debate. It seems that Dante here sees all of the languages derived from Latin, including his own Tuscan dialect and other dialects of Italian as well as the languages of southern and northern France, as derived from the same “mother” tongue. Thus he sees Arnaut’s poetry as linguistically related to his own. Arnaut, then, is the best of vernacular poets (according to Guinizelli); Dante already walks with the best of poets in Latin itself. Arnaut actually says little—he gives his name, expresses regret for his sins, and asks that the pilgrim remember him when he reaches Paradise. He says this in relatively simple verse (not the complex poetry for which he was known), but curiously he says it in Provençal. Arnaut is the only non-Italian person in the Comedy allowed to speak in his own native language. In Canto 27 the Angel of Chastity recites the sixth beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5.8, NRSV). Commentators have noted that this beatitude is particularly appropriate here, since not only have the penitent shades’ hearts been purified of lust after this terrace, but since this is the final circle of Purgatory, those who move up from here have completed their purgation and are indeed about to be granted a vision of God. Before moving upward, however, the souls must go through the wall of flames, the last barrier that separates them from the Earthly Paradise. The pilgrim, still in his mortal body, naturally holds back from that last step. He indicates that he has seen men’s bodies burned. It is entirely possible that Dante had at some point witnessed an execution by burning—not an uncommon form of punishment in Dante’s time. In fact the Florentine commonwealth had sentenced Dante himself in absentia to death at the stake if he was ever caught in Florentine territory. That may in part be feeding the pilgrim’s fear here. But this final purifying fire seems necessary. It is, as has been suggested, the fulfillment of John the Baptist’s words concerning the Messiah:

“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3.11, NRSV). As the baptism by water initiated one into the Church Militant on earth, so here the baptism by fire initiates the shades into the Church Triumphant in Paradise; as the water cleansed the newborn soul of its original sin, the fire burns the vestiges of worldly sin from the souls entering Paradise. In his final act as Dante’s mentor Virgil makes several attempts to convince the pilgrim logically to enter the flames. It is only when Virgil’s argument transcends reason—when he reminds Dante that he will see Beatrice again once he has passed the fire—that the pilgrim steps into the flame. Since this is indeed the circle of lust, it may be that the pilgrim is to be seen as burning away any vestiges of impure love of Beatrice from his soul, so that when he emerges, his love for her has become absolutely pure. The angel on the other side of the flames sings, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father”—these are the words that, according to Christ, will be uttered by the Son of Man at the Last Judgment to those who have gained salvation. No doubt Dante expected the audience to remember how that verse continues: “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25.34, NRSV). Thus now that the souls have passed through their purgation, they are ready to claim their heavenly inheritance. It is interesting to note that the baptistery in Florence (the same one that Dante alludes to in Canto 19 of the Inferno) contains a mosaic of the Last Judgment in which an angel is depicted opening a door and uttering these very words. We never see the removal of the last letter p from Dante’s forehead. Some scholars believe it may have been burned off in the fire. In any case he moves quite lightly up the steep pass until night falls. On this third night on the mountain the pilgrim has a third prophetic dream just before dawn. Less obscure than the two earlier dreams (in Cantos 9 and 19), this one is a vision of Rachel and Leah, the two daughters of Laban who marry the patriarch Jacob in Genesis 29–30. In the story Jacob loves Rachel and works for her father, Laban, for seven years in order to win her hand. On the wed-

Purgatorio ding night, however, Laban substitutes his older daughter, Leah. The furious Jacob is forced to work seven more years in order to obtain Rachel as well. Leah, however, bears Jacob seven children, while Rachel remains childless, until finally she is able to bear two sons, Joseph and Benjamin. In Dante’s dream Leah is seen picking flowers and making garlands with her hands all day long, while her sister, Rachel, spends all her time studying herself in a mirror. Rachel loves to contemplate her own eyes, Leah says, while Leah’s own joy lies in working with her hands. Standard Christian interpretation from at least the time of Augustine saw these two figures as symbols of the active and the contemplative life: Leah represented the good works, the deeds of the active life in the world; Rachel, the higher and eternal joy of the contemplation of God. Rachel’s mirror is not to be taken as a symbol of vanity but rather of reflection. As for her gazing into her own eyes, Singleton points to a passage in the Convivio (4.2.18) in which Dante asserts that philosophy contemplates the truth but also contemplates the act of contemplation (Singleton 2, 660)—thus Rachel’s eyes that see truth are themselves the object of her contemplative gaze. Since this dream must in some way prefigure the events that are about to occur, we must assume that Leah and Rachel parallel the two women Dante will meet in the Earthly Paradise. As Jacob was surprised to obtain Leah rather than Rachel, so Dante may be surprised to meet Matelda after being led to believe he was about to see Beatrice. Matelda, then, like Leah, must at least in part suggest the active life, while Beatrice will suggest the contemplative. Virgil’s final words to the pilgrim as they reach the Earthly Paradise at the end of this canto demonstrate that he has taken the pilgrim as far as human reason may reach. The purpose of Purgatory has been to reform the will, so that the human soul would freely will the good, as it had before the fall. The central cantos of Purgatorio had been concerned with the will and with sin as misdirected or perverted love. The pilgrim, having passed through Purgatory, now possesses a will completely in line with reason, and therefore conforming to the natural law by which the human will and love were

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directed toward the highest good. Thus, Virgil says, Dante no longer needs his guidance, and like the other souls that go to this place, is free to follow his own inclinations, which now will be free from sin. This explains the presence of the Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden, atop Mount Purgatory: The souls who reach this place are souls in whom human nature has been restored to its prelapsarian condition, and they are as Adam and Eve before the Fall. There has been some critical debate about Virgil’s language at the end of the canto, when he metaphorically invests Dante with a crown and miter to make him lord of himself. Does this suggest that Dante is now beyond the earthly power of the pope (the miter) or emperor (the crown)? Does it suggest that human society would, like the pilgrim, be in line with God’s original intent if it were ruled by the dual authorities of church and empire? I suggest that this passage relates the words of Marco Lombardo in Canto 16. Marco had explained that human soul, born with a natural inclination to love God’s creation, needed the guiding power of law to grow virtuous, and that the church and empire were originally intended to provide that guidance. But now the pilgrim, his will perfected, needs no law, of either church or state, but needs only to follow his own inclinations.

EARTHLY PARADISE AND MEETING WITH BEATRICE (CANTOS 28–33) Synopsis Eager to explore the pleasant garden he finds himself in, the pilgrim begins to wander through the trees. Birds sing sweetly in their branches, which are stirred by a gentle breeze from the east. As he moves deeper into the wood, Dante finds his path blocked by a clear stream. On the far side of the stream he sees a lady gathering flowers and singing. He calls to her, asking that she move to the bank of the river so that he may understand the words she sings. She turns—like a lady on a dance floor, Dante says—and then walks to the opposite bank as she sings. She then raises her eyes to him, and he is filled with a longing to cross the stream. She is only three paces from him, but he feels he cannot cross the water.

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The lady addresses all three of the poets (Statius and Virgil have walked up behind Dante), telling them that this place is the cradle of mankind (i.e., the Garden of Eden), and that if they are amazed to see her smiling here, they should remember the Delectasti me—the words of the 91st Psalm (92nd in modern translations): “For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy” (92.4, NRSV). She then asks the pilgrim whether there are other things he wishes to know. Dante is curious about the breeze and the running stream, remembering what Statius told him about the lack of changing weather on the mountain. The garden was raised to this height after Adam’s Fall, the lady says, to protect it from damaging weather. The breeze is simply the result of the movement of the heavenly spheres, she tells him. The breeze scatters throughout the world the seeds of the plants in the garden, which contains all the species of plant life on earth, and some that no man since Adam has ever seen. As for the stream, it is not like rivers on earth that spring from a source that must be replenished by rain, but is replenished perpetually by the will of God. There are streams on both sides of the garden, the lady says: This one is Lethe, whose water erases the memory of sin; the other stream is Eunoë, whose water restores the memory of good deeds performed. This is the place, the lady concludes, that ancient poets dreamed of on Parnassus (mountain of the Muses) when they sang about the golden age of mankind. At these words Dante looks back at his two companions and sees them smiling. The encounter is reminiscent of a pastorella—a lyric poem in which the speaker encounters a young girl in a rural setting. It continues in the opening of Canto 29, as she begins to sing like one in love. Hers is a holy love, however, as her song is the first verse from the 32nd Psalm: Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata (“Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered”). While she sings, she begins to stroll upstream along the bank of the river, and the pilgrim keeps pace with her on the other bank. They have not walked far along the water when the lady looks at him and tells him to pay close attention to what is about to occur.

A sudden flash of light fills the woods, and with it is a sweet melody on the air. So pleased is the pilgrim by the sudden beauty around him that he curses the sin of Eve that separated humankind from these paradisiacal delights. As the pilgrim ponders thus, the light becomes blazing and the music turns to a chant. At this point Dante invokes Urania, the muse of astronomy, to help him describe the heavenly procession that fills the remainder of this canto. Leading the pageant amid chants of “Hosanna” are seven golden, blazing candlesticks that the pilgrim first mistakes for trees. Bewildered, the pilgrim turns to Virgil, whose look indicates he is as confused as his ward. When the pilgrim looks back at the moving candelabra, the lady encourages him to look beyond them to see what follows in the pageant. The pilgrim moves as close to the water as he can and watches the pageant closely. The seven candlesticks make streaks of bright color in the air, and under this vivid sky march groups of figures dressed in white and crowned with lilies. First are 24 elders, walking two by two and singing a song of blessing for the Virgin. Next are the four sixwinged creatures from Ezekiel 1.4–14, each wearing a green crown. At the center of a square formed by the beasts is a two-wheeled triumphal chariot drawn by a griffin, whose wings rise higher than the pilgrim can see. The griffin has gold feathers and a white body scored with blood-red streaks. Three ladies—one red, one green, and one white—dance near the chariot’s right wheel, while near the left dance four other ladies in purple robes, led by one with three eyes. Two dignified elders march side by side behind the chariot, one dressed as a physician, the other carrying a sword. Next are four more humble men, trailed by a single old man moving as if in a dream. These last seven elders wear crowns of roses. When the chariot stops directly across the stream from the pilgrim, a great thunderclap is heard, at which the four beasts and the flaming candelabra halt. With this the canto ends. When the procession halts, the 24 elders turn toward the chariot and one of them sings three times a line from the Song of Solomon (4.8): Veni, sponsa, de Librano (“Come with me from Lebanon,

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Beatrice addresses Dante from the car, from Canto 30 of the Purgatorio, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

my bride,” NRSV), a line all the other voices echo. At that word a hundred angels rise above the chariot (Dante compares them to the dead rising at the Last Judgment), calling out in Latin a paraphrase of Matthew 21.9, “Blessed are you who come.” The angels all toss flowers into the air that rain down as they sing Manibus, O, Date lilia plenis (“O give lilies with full hands,” Aeneid 6.883). As the sun rises through a mist, a white-veiled lady appears amid the falling lilies, wearing an olive-leaved crown and green cloak over a red gown. Instantly the pilgrim recognizes Beatrice. Overcome by his emotions, the pilgrim turns to share these feelings with Virgil but finds that his old guide has disappeared. Recognizing that he has seen the last of his faithful mentor, the pilgrim breaks into tears—even the joys of Paradise cannot prevent him from mourning Virgil’s

loss. At this point Beatrice addresses the pilgrim by name—“Dante, though Virgil leaves you, do not weep” (l. 55). She chides Dante for his tears, saying that he will have other reason to weep. He looks up to face her sternness, and she tells him, “Yes, I am Beatrice” (l. 73), but her words are sharp with reprimand. The pilgrim looks down into the stream of Lethe but shrinks in shame from his own reflection. In compassion for the berated pilgrim the angels surrounding the pair begin to sing In te, Domine, speravi (“In you, o Lord, I seek refuge,” Psalm 31.1), a verse that goes on to say, “Do not let me ever be put to shame.” When the pilgrim hears this song, he begins to weep profoundly, and as he does so, Beatrice addresses the angelic choir, though she speaks for the pilgrim’s own edification. Dante was given natural gifts of such quality that

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he could have accomplished great things but has squandered his gifts. While she was alive, Beatrice says, she was able to lead him toward worthiness, but when she passed into her second life, the pilgrim lost sight of the path of truth and pursued lesser goods. So far gone was he, Beatrice says, that the only way to save him was by the extraordinary means she employed—visiting Limbo and persuading the shade of Virgil to lead the pilgrim through the realm of the damned. It would be contrary to divine justice, she concludes, to allow the pilgrim to cross the Lethe without shedding tears of true contrition. As Canto 31 begins, Beatrice turns from addressing the angels to addressing the pilgrim directly, charging him to speak and to confess to the truth of her accusation. When the pilgrim hesitates, tongue-tied, she orders him to answer her. Overcome by grief and shame, he is able only to choke out a nearly inaudible “yes.” Unappeased, Beatrice demands to know what was so enticing about all the things that drew him away from the path toward the highest good. He answers that the false joys these worldly goods promised were too appealing to him once he no longer had her to guide him. Beatrice approves of the pilgrim’s confession but presses on in order, she says, to make his resistance stronger next time. Having seen her own perfect beauty when she was alive, how could the pilgrim have been drawn to some other mortal being when she died? He should have immediately followed her to the ultimate source of eternal beauty and happiness, to God. Finally Beatrice tells the pilgrim to raise his “beard” (i.e., his face, l. 68) and look at her. When he gazes upon her veiled face, he is overcome by remorse for having loved any mortal thing after her. His guilt causes him to swoon. When he revives from his swoon, the pilgrim finds himself in the arms of Matelda, who is drawing him into the stream. He hears being sung the phrase asperges me (cleanse me), after which Matelda dips his head under the waters of the Lethe and lets him drink. Now Matelda leads the pilgrim onto the sacred shore, where he joins in the dance with the four ladies (the cardinal virtues) at the left side of the chariot. They were ordained to be the handmaids

of Beatrice long before she was born, they sing, and it is their function to lead the pilgrim to Beatrice’s eyes. In those emerald orbs he sees reflected the figure of the griffin. While the griffin itself does not change, the reflection alternates between the creature’s two natures (i.e., the divine and human natures of Christ). As the pilgrim stands transfixed by this reflection, the other three dancing ladies (the theological virtues) come forth and beg Beatrice to remove her veil and show the pilgrim her hidden smile. The canto ends with Dante’s apostrophe to Beatrice, lamenting his inability to express her unveiled beauty. When Dante the pilgrim finally, after 10 years, gazes on the unveiled face of Beatrice, her dazzling beauty temporarily blinds him. When he has regained his sight, he sees that the heavenly pageant is moving off toward the east. The pilgrim joins Statius and Matelda as they follow the pageant, finally halting in front of a towering tree, which proves to be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The tree is barren, without fruit or leaves, but when the griffin reaches the tree he attaches the pole of the chariot to it—returning to the tree a piece that had been taken from it, the narrator says. Immediately the tree bursts into blossom that Dante describes as brighter than violet, at which point all the company begins to chant a hymn, unknown to the pilgrim since it is one sung only in Heaven. The pilgrim, lulled by the music, falls asleep. When a voice stirs him from his sleep, he awakens to find Matelda bending over him and momentarily fears that Beatrice has left. But he finds that although the heavenly pageant has moved off, Beatrice has remained behind to guard the chariot, sitting under the tree and encircled by the seven maidens. She addresses the pilgrim, telling him that he will live outside the walls of Heaven for a short time before joining her eternally in the City of God. But first, she tells him, he should observe the chariot carefully so that when he returns to the world he can write about it. Obediently the pilgrim turns his attention to the chariot. As he watches, an eagle suddenly hurtles down from the sky, tearing through the tree and destroying the leaves and fruit before crashing full

Purgatorio on into the chariot. Next an emaciated-looking fox jumps into the chariot, but Beatrice chases it off. Now the eagle returns, shedding golden feathers on the cart. At that point a grieving voice from Heaven calls out, bemoaning the cargo that this little ship must bear. The ground abruptly opens up beneath the chariot’s wheels, and a dragon emerges. It drives its scorpionlike tail through the floor of the chariot, then wanders off. At that point the chariot begins to sprout feathers, until it is covered completely, wheels and all. Seven heads suddenly grow from the chariot itself, three from the pole with horns like oxen, and a one-horned head from each corner of the cart. Seated upon this monstrous beast is a harlot, who flirts sluttishly with a giant who accompanies her. But when she casts a lustful eye on the pilgrim, the giant beats her jealously and drags her and the monster-chariot away into the woods. As the final canto of the Purgatorio opens, the seven nymphs mourn the loss of the chariot by chanting the words of Psalm 79, Deus venerunt gentes (“O God, the nations have come”), which is a lament for the destruction of the Temple. Beatrice also mourns, with a face like that of the Virgin Mary at the Crucifixion. Beatrice then repeats the words of Christ from John 16.16 (“A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me”). Now Beatrice begins to move off with the nymphs going before her and nods to the pilgrim, Matelda, and Statius to follow. Beatrice tells the pilgrim to keep pace with her so that he can hear her words. She asks why the pilgrim does not question her, and he answers that she knows all his needs. Beatrice then utters a prophecy to the effect that the chariot broken by the serpent “was, and is not.” The eagle will not be forever without heirs, she says, and a time is coming when “five hundred, ten, and five” shall kill the giant and the whore. She admits that her words are obscure but tells the pilgrim that soon their meaning will be clear. She asks only that he remember them and repeat them to the living. Beatrice then instructs the pilgrim to describe the tree and its destruction carefully, adding that to rob the tree or break its limbs is to blaspheme against God. She tells the pilgrim he should

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already recognize why the tree is so tall and why it is wider at the top than below. Seeing that the pilgrim is confused, however, Beatrice tells him that he should carry at least some trace of her meaning, if not the words themselves. The pilgrim responds by asking why her words seem so far beyond his ability to understand, and Beatrice answers that this is to teach him how far apart are earthly and divine knowledge—and how far the pilgrim himself has strayed from Beatrice. Dante responds that he does not recall estranging himself from her, and Beatrice reminds him of his drinking from the Lethe—the fact that that stream made him forget his estrangement from her proves that such estrangement was indeed a sin. But she goes on to promise that from now on she will speak so that he can understand her words. The group has now arrived at the source of the two rivers of the Earthly Paradise (the Lethe and the Eunoë). When the pilgrim asks what these rivers are, Beatrice asks Matelda to explain (naming the lady for the first time), and Matelda excuses herself, saying she has already explained to Dante the functions of the two rivers. Beatrice says that perhaps something more important is clouding the pilgrim’s mind and then asks Matelda to lead him into the Eunoë. Matelda takes the pilgrim by the hand and invites Statius into the stream as well. Here Dante addresses the reader, saying that he would tell more of the pleasure of drinking from that stream, but that he has already completed the allotted space for his second canticle. So he merely says that he returned to Beatrice refreshed, and ready to rise to the stars. Commentary In Canto 28 Dante relies heavily on the literary convention of the locus amoenus (“delightful place”) usually associated with descriptions of the Golden Age or the Earthly Paradise. Such descriptions usually featured a beautiful garden of trees, various flowers, singing birds, and a gently flowing stream, set in moderate springtime weather and a soft breeze. The wood in which the pilgrim finds himself here seems to recall, and directly contrast, the dark wood of the first canto of the Comedy. There the pilgrim wanders in fear and confusion, having lost his way through sin and error, but glimpses with

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hope the sun shining on the peak of a mountain he tries to climb (Inferno 1, ll. 16–30). Driven back by the three allegorical beasts of sin, he meets Virgil and begins to make his way through Hell and Purgatory. In this canto, having completed that arduous journey, the pilgrim is ready to enter Paradise—what was represented by the sunlit top of that earlier mountain—and is about to meet his second guide, to begin the blissful half of his journey. He is about to begin again from a forest, but a very different kind of forest. In placing a beautiful young maiden gathering flowers into the picture, Dante not only recalls the image of Leah from his recent dream, but also draws from another literary tradition, that of the lyric pastorella. In this kind of lyric poem (popular among Provençal, French, and Italian poets for centuries), the speaker is generally a knight passing through a rustic scene, where he happens upon a lovely solitary peasant woman. As the poem progresses, the knight appeals to the woman to grant him her sexual favors, and she willingly obliges. Certainly Dante’s encounter with Matelda bears a number of the features of this genre, and Singleton points out some specific verbal parallels between this canto and Guido Cavalcanti’s pastorella beginning In un boschetto trova’ pasturella (“In a little grove I found a shepherdess”) (Singleton 2, 670). The pilgrim’s response to Matelda in the beginning of this canto suggests that he, too, is thinking in terms of the pastorella tradition, and he somewhat flirtatiously asks the lovely young woman to stand closer so that he can understand the words of her song. The three classical allusions Dante uses in describing this encounter underscore the sexual potential of this scene. When the pilgrim addresses Matelda, he says she reminds him of Proserpine (l. 49). The daughter of Ceres, Proserpine was snatched by Pluto while gathering flowers in a field and taken below to Hades become mistress of the underworld. Dante knew the version of this story in Ovid (Metamorphoses 5.385–408), and his description here reflects Ovid’s in some points. Later Dante compares Matelda’s eyes to those of Venus when, while kissing her son Cupid, she was accidentally pricked by one of his arrows and fell instantly in love with the ill-fated Adonis (Metamorphoses

10.525–532). Then as he looks at Matelda across the narrow stream, the pilgrim is reminded of the Hellespont and the story of Hero and Leander: Leander, a young man from Abydos, loved Hero, a priestess of Venus at Sestros, but their love was forbidden. Each night Leander would swim the Hellespont from Abydos to meet his love secretly in Sestros. When he drowned, Hero killed herself as well. All three classical allusions recall the destructive power of sexual passion. But far from being the sexualized shepherdess of the pastorella, Matelda is in fact the woman prefigured by Leah in the pilgrim’s dream, the allegorical figure of the active life of the soul. She is, moreover, the image of the unfallen Eve here in the garden (to whom the pilgrim plays a newly innocent Adam), and therefore beyond the sinful temptations suggested by the pastorella conventions. We are not made privy to the song she sings that the pilgrim, perhaps assuming it is a love song, calls her over to hear. But we can be relatively sure that the nature of her song is similar to that of the psalm to which she alludes (Psalm 92.5–6)—perhaps it is in fact the psalm itself. Frequently used as a part of the sunrise service of lauds, the psalm expresses joy in God’s creation, and love of the Creator. Matelda makes it clear that her love song is directed to God, and her fair welcome of the pilgrim is Christian charity. For centuries scholars have attempted to identify Matelda with a specific historical woman. The favorite candidate of early commentators was the countess Matelda of Canossa, or Matelda of Tuscany (1046–1115), a wealthy and powerful supporter of Pope Gregory VII in his struggle against the Emperor Henry IV (in fact, it was her courtyard where Henry stood barefoot in the snow as penance when he humbled himself to the pope). Given Dante’s political beliefs, it seems highly unlikely that he would make such a partisan figure as Matelda of Canossa the model for his new Eve. Other scholars have suggested that Matelda is modeled on one of two German nuns, either Mechthild von Magdeburg (ca. 1210–ca. 1285, author of the mystical Flowing Light of the Godhead), or her younger contemporary Saint Mechthild von Hackeborn (ca. 1240–98, author of the Book of

Purgatorio Special Grace). If Matelda represents the active life, however, it seems unlikely that either of the German mystics, who clearly were known for their contemplative lives, would have been the model for Matelda. Some scholars have even suggested that Matelda, who serves here as a kind of forerunner to Beatrice, may be one of the ladies who serve that function in the Vita nuova. But a serious shortcoming of any of these identifications is that the figure of Matelda acts here as a kind of guardian spirit of the Earthly Paradise (as Cato served that function for Purgatory itself), and so must have been in this position since Christ’s death and resurrection reopened Paradise for humanity. She cannot therefore be based on a historical personage from only the previous century or two. Since she is not named until Canto 33 (l. 119), it seems safe to say that who she is is less important for Dante than what she represents. Perhaps Dante chose the name Matelda not to recall an actual woman but because the meaning of the name—“powerful in battle”—implies the active life of a soldier in the Church Militant. In response to the pilgrim’s questions about the breeze and the rivers in Eden, Matelda provides answers that could not have been supplied by Virgil, since they could be known only through divine revelation. The breeze, she explains, is stirred ultimately by the movement of the spheres, while the rivers of Eden are replenished by an eternal fountain created by God. Thus neither is related to any meteorological disturbance, since no such events occur on the mountain (as Statius had made clear in Canto 21, ll. 40–54). More specifically Matelda identifies this first river—which separates the pilgrim from Eden as the Jordan had separated the Israelites from the Promised Land—as the Lethe, the stream of classical myth the pilgrim had asked Virgil about in Inferno 14 when the ancient poet left it out of his description of the rivers of Hell. The pilgrim has read of the Lethe (the name means “oblivion”) in works by classical authors like Virgil and Statius, who make it the river in Hades from which dead souls drink and forget their earthly lives. Dante places the stream here in the Earthly Paradise, and Matelda tells him that a drink from the stream

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wipes out the soul’s memory of sin. As the pilgrim will move through Paradise, he will find that it is not true that the sins of the souls are completely forgotten. What seems to be forgotten are the despair and guilt associated with the sin: God’s forgiveness and grace in the face of that sin are remembered clearly. For the other river in Eden Dante coins the name Eunoë from the Greek eu(good) and nous (mind—here, probably suggesting memory). This river, Matelda explains, strengthens the soul’s memory of all good deeds performed in the world. The powers of the rivers are only effective, she stresses, if the shade drinks from them in the proper order. Matelda’s last words in this canto serve two functions: On the narrative level they allow Virgil and Statius to feel more familiar with Eden. At the same time they also relate to the earlier discussion of the value of classical literature implied by Statius’s praise of Virgil in Canto 22. Matelda says that the ancient poets who wrote of the Golden Age (who would include Virgil and Statius as well as Ovid and others) had, through inspiration, a vague glimpse of the true Paradise, the place in which they now stand. When Dante looks back at the two classical poets, they are smiling as they now see the truth clearly. Canto 29 is one of the most formally allegorical cantos in the entire Comedy. It begins with Matelda’s song Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata (“Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered”) from the penitential Psalm 32, which serves as a kind of summarizing beatitude alluding to those sung on the seven terraces of the mountain. The idea of the covering or hiding sins also looks forward to the pilgrim’s drinking from Lethe, whose waters will obliterate the sins in his mind. Before that happens, though, the pilgrim will witness the spectacle of the heavenly pageant. This is a vision so glorious that Dante feels compelled to invoke the Muses to assist him in describing it. Calling them holy virgins and so Christianizing his invocation of them, he calls them from their Mount Helicon, whose springs were sacred to them, and asks specifically for the aid of Urania, the muse of astronomy and, by association, of heavenly or cosmological themes.

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The procession that the pilgrim witnesses is depicted as a kind of formal staged masque representing the Church Triumphant—that is, the church in eternity, comprising the members of the Church Militant (the church in this world) who have died and gone to glory. As in a masque the individuals in the pageant represent things allegorically—they are not themselves the characters they may suggest (since the evangelist John appears in three different guises, for example, this would be impossible). The pageant is led by seven enormous candles that the pilgrim mistakes at first for trees. As do many other aspects of the pageant, this seems to be drawn from the book of Revelation, in this case 1.12, where John sees seven golden lamp stands. John first interprets these as symbolizing the seven churches (1.20) and later the seven “spirits of God” (4.5). From the candles issue a rainbow of seven colors that light up the sky under which the pageant moves. These colors, looming above the procession that represents the church, suggest the spiritual gifts that embrace and surround the church. Thus this rainbow has been interpreted since the Middle Ages as representing the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, usually listed as wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord and based on the qualities of the Messiah as described in Isaiah 11.1–3 (and discussed by Dante in his Convivio 4.21.11–12). In Revelation the seven lights surround the Son of Man (i.e., the Messiah), who then speaks to John. In Dante the colored lights issuing from the candles are called “streaming pennants” (l. 75), suggesting the banners that might accompany a royal procession. Further the voices that follow the candles sing out Hosannah, as did the crowd who welcomed Jesus on his entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21.9). All of these associations combine to suggest the advent of Christ himself. The 24 old men who walk in pairs behind the candles are drawn from the 24 elders surrounding the throne in Revelation 4.4–5. There they represent the 12 apostles and the 12 tribes of Israel. Here they are meant to symbolize the 24 books of the Old Testament according to Saint Jerome’s numbering in his Vulgate Bible: Jerome counted

the 12 minor prophets as a single book and made single books as well of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah. As in Revelation the elders are dressed in white robes of purity, but instead of the golden crowns Saint John gives them, Dante has them wear garlands of lilies. The white of the lilies is intended to denote faith—the purity of their messianic faith in the coming of Christ. To illustrate this faith, the elders chant a song in lines 85–87 that recalls the words of the angel Gabriel in his annunciation to Mary, and the words of Elizabeth when she is visited by Mary, in Luke 1.28 and 1.42. Next at the center of the pageant are the four beasts and the triumphal chariot drawn by the griffin. The beasts—modeled on Revelation 4.8 and ultimately deriving from Ezekiel 1.4–14—are the angel, lion, ox, and eagle that surround the throne of God, taken in medieval iconography to represent, respectively, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four evangelists. The green garlands worn by the beasts signify hope, the hope of salvation promised in the Gospels. Their six wings (Dante here follows Saint John rather then Ezekiel, who gives them four) may suggest the speed with which the Gospels spread though the world. The chariot that the four beasts guard is a two-wheeled chariot, the triumphal chariot used by conquerors like Augustus when they returned to Rome in victory, though far more splendid. Thus the chariot itself represents the Church Triumphant. It is drawn by a griffin—a mythological creature with the head and foreparts of an eagle and the breast and hindquarters of a lion. Commentators assume that this creature represents Christ himself, who leads or draws the church. The dual nature of the griffin suggests the duality of Christ himself—half-man and half-God. The birdlike parts, aiming heavenward, imply the divinity of Christ. The white and red bands on the body of the lion suggest, respectively, the purity of Christ (whose life was without sin) and the sacrifice of his precious blood that redeemed humankind. The seven dancing women attending the chariot represent the virtues. On the right side (the privileged side) dance the three theological virtues—Faith, Hope, and Love (or caritas). Caritas is red (the fiery zeal of love); Faith is white (the

Purgatorio    165 color of the garlands on the 24 elders); and Hope is green (the color of the wreaths on the four evangelists). In the dance Faith and Love take turns leading while Hope consistently follows, suggesting the relative worth of the three virtues. On the left dance the four cardinal virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. These are the classical virtues, and therefore they are dressed in purple robes, the imperial color that associates them with the empire, the secular world, where they govern human moral conduct and make the organized commonwealth possible, thereby allowing a happy life in this world. Following the busy central group are seven additional elders, dressed in white like the first group but crowned in garlands of red roses denoting passionate Christian love. These figures represent the books of the New Testament. The first two characters symbolize Saint Luke as the author of the book of Acts, dressed as a doctor (Paul called Luke the “beloved physician” in Colossians 4.14) and Saint Paul as the author of the 14 epistles, who carries a sword, which may suggest Paul’s martyrdom by beheading or may represent what Paul calls “sword of the spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6.17, NRSV). This pair is followed by four figures suggesting the writers of the seven “catholic” epistles (so-called because they are general, rather than written to specific communities or individuals, as Paul’s letters are): Saint James the Apostle, Saint Peter, Saint John the Apostle, and Jude. Finally the last elder walking alone suggests the Revelation of John. This particular elder is described as moving as if in a trance, or nearly asleep, suggesting the mystical visionary nature of the text of Revelation. Thus the heavenly pageant encompasses all time, from Genesis to the end of the world, with Christ at the central point. It also, as some scholars have observed, forms the shape of a cross, with Christ and the chariot at the crossbeam and the seven virtues forming the arms of the cross. It is ritualistic, like a processional service in the church itself. And in its allusions to Revelation it recalls the heavenly vision of Saint John, thereby implicitly placing Dante in the same company as he begins his extended vision of Paradise. The thunder that punctuates the end of the procession is clearly a

supernatural sign (since as we know, no meteorological disturbances occur on the mountain), indicating the importance of this spectacle and of what is about to occur now that the pageant has halted directly across from the pilgrim. When Beatrice appears in Canto 30, it is in an atmosphere of significance. First, one of the elders representing the Old Testament (presumably the one representing the Song of Solomon) delivers the thrice-uttered invitation Veni, sponsa, de Libano, generally interpreted, as are all of the wedding poems in the Song, to refer allegorically to the bride of Christ (i.e., either the church itself or the Christian soul). Dante, however, had previously (in the Convivio 2.14.20) interpreted the spouse as divine wisdom (represented as female throughout the Old Testament). Sapientia, the

Charity, Hope, and Faith, from Canto 29 of the Purgatorio, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

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wisdom of God, seems to be one of Beatrice’s allegorical meanings. Old Testament wisdom, however, is associated theologically with the New Testament logos, the Word of God. Indeed, a number of points in this canto present Beatrice’s coming as an analogue of the second coming of Christ. The angels welcome Beatrice with the words Benedictus qui venis, echoing the “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” that echo the cries of the crowd at Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (Matthew 21.9). The fact that Dante changes the pronoun from he to you but maintains the masculine ending on the verb (Benedictus rather than Benedicta) encourages the reader to think of the original application of the cry to Christ. On one level the hundred angels who precede her appearance recall the Vita nuova (23.7), when Dante envisions a band of angels following Beatrice to Heaven. But Dante compares the angels to the resurrection of the dead that is to occur at the Second Coming, the Day of Judgment. Yet it is Beatrice who comes, and what follows will indeed be a scene of judgment for the pilgrim. Dante compares her to the rising sun (another image of Christ), and she is clothed in white, green, and red—the colors of faith, hope, and love worn by the participants in the pageant. Her olive garland is, as Dante notes (l. 68), sacred to Minerva, the classical goddess of wisdom—further associating Beatrice with Sapientia. On the literal level of the allegory then what is represented here is Dante’s meeting with his former love who has led him to God. On the moral level what is pictured is the human soul facing the examination of divine wisdom. On the anagogical level Beatrice represents the coming of Christ at the Last Judgment, when all souls will stand before him. Before Beatrice assumes her role as the pilgrim’s new guide, however, he must first bid farewell to the faithful Virgil. Dante first prepares us for this with the words Manibus, O, Date lilia plenis (“Oh give lilies with full hands”), used as the angels strew lilies in anticipation of Beatrice’s arrival. The words come from Virgil’s Aeneid (6.883), at the climax of the speech of Aeneas’s father, Anchises, in Hades, where he presents the future glory of

Rome and laments the premature death of Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the favorite nephew and heir apparent of Augustus, who died suddenly in 23 B.C.E. at the age of 19. There the line is an expression of pagan grief. Here Dante makes it a demonstration of Christian celebration. But it is also Dante’s tribute to his poetic master—a Latin quotation that is here used on the same level as the earlier biblical lines. But it is not his final tribute. As he recognizes Beatrice and turns to speak to his guide, the pilgrim intends to say, “I recognize the signs of the ancient flame” (l. 48)—the very words that Dido uses when she confesses to her sister, Anna, her love of Aeneas, the first love she has felt since the death of her husband, Sychaeus (Aeneid 4.23). In the case of Dido she feels she has broken faith with the dead. In the case of Dante he is reunited with his love—who is about to chastise him for breaking faith with her after her death. But when the pilgrim turns to address Virgil, his mentor is no longer with him. Dante’s first encounter with Beatrice may be somewhat disappointing for readers, who may have been expecting a loving and joyous reunion. Instead Beatrice seems haughty and stern, and her greeting leaves the pilgrim in tears. To readers familiar with the conventions of courtly love Beatrice seems like the disdainful mistress whose daunger makes her lover quake. One might be reminded of Guinevere in Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot or The Knight of the Cart: Lancelot, risking life, limb, and reputation, battles with numerous knights and crosses a lifethreatening sword bridge to rescue Guinevere from the Land of Gorre, only to be snubbed by her when he arrives for a small sin he committed against love. Here the pilgrim has reached the end of his arduous journey only to be chastised by Beatrice; Dante, however, is dealing with Divine Love, and the sins he has committed are not minor. The first word Beatrice speaks is Dante’s name— the only time his name appears in the Comedy (l. 55) Some scholars have seen in this the suggestion of a second baptism, as the pilgrim is about to enter a new life. Thus this marks the turning point of the entire poem: he is about to become a saved soul rather than a sinful one. Before that happens, though, the pilgrim must truly repent, and so Bea-

Purgatorio trice must be stern—more a loving mother figure than a disdainful lover—in order to ensure the pilgrim’s repentance. She begins with a sarcastic rebuke of Dante for being so slow in finding the road to human happiness, at which point Dante, looking down at his sinful reflection in the stream of Lethe, shrinks in shame. When the angels show compassion for Dante, Beatrice gently corrects them as well: they view the pilgrim as a saved soul, but Beatrice knows his sins and knows that he must repent them before drinking from the river of forgetfulness. She makes her case to the angels as if to a court of law, rather than addressing the pilgrim directly. Her narration essentially summarizes the action of the Vita nuova. In life, she says, she tried for 16 years to show Dante the way to true happiness in the highest good. After her death he was disloyal to her memory (as Dido was disloyal to Sychaeus), chasing after false images of the good (as Dante describes in Sections 35–39 of the Vita nuova). Essentially Beatrice is reinforcing what Dante has already learned from Virgil in Canto 17 about love of the good and love of false goods. That misdirected love has been Dante’s sin when he was left without Beatrice, and therefore he became so degenerate that only his journey through Hell could have led him to true contrition. He must, therefore, repent and confess now, as divine justice requires, before drinking the waters of the Lethe. In Canto 31 the pilgrim himself undergoes the sacrament of penance, with Beatrice in the role of confessor. Thus the canto encapsulates the pattern of contrition, confession, and satisfaction upon which the whole of Purgatory is structured. Beatrice compels the pilgrim to confess to the sins she has charged him with in the previous canto. The guilt and shame that the pilgrim has been feeling since Beatrice began her scolding are evidence of his contrition and allow him to speak only a muted “yes” in line 14 to begin his confession. It is not until the tercet in lines 34–36 that he completes his confession, admitting that he had pursued the false felicity of transient worldly things in the wake of Beatrice’s death. These things may have included physical pleasures, such as another woman (i.e., the woman from the window in the Vita nuova), or intel-

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lectual pleasures, such as philosophy (the allegorical meaning of the window lady, according to Dante’s Convivio)—anything that drew the pilgrim’s love away from the highest good, toward which Beatrice had been leading him. Dante’s confession is not enough for Beatrice, who continues to upbraid him to ensure his feeling of genuine contrition for his transgressions—so that, she says, he will be better able to resist the call of the Sirens when he hears them again (l. 45). The Siren image recalls Dante’s second dream in Canto 19, where the Siren seems to foreshadow the sins of avarice, gluttony, and lust of the following cantos. Here, however, we recognize that the dream also foreshadowed Dante’s own confession, and the woman of the dream who shows Dante the true nature of the Siren prefigures Beatrice herself in her role as confessor in this scene. When she died, Beatrice tells the pilgrim, he should have recognized that even the best of physical objects was a transitory joy, and his affections should have followed her immortal soul to the eternal realm, where they could have been led to the highest good, the source of perpetual felicity. When Beatrice tells the pilgrim to raise his “beard” to her (l. 68)—a sarcastic comment implying that he has been acting like a beardless boy— Dante compares his resistance to that of an oak tree finally uprooted by a storm, playing on the original Latin meaning of contrition as “ground up or broken” (recall the dark, crumbling step in Canto 9). The pilgrim’s remorse reaches its crescendo in lines 85–88, where he hates everything he had previously loved that was not Beatrice, and the shock of his guilt finally makes him swoon (l. 89). The swoon appears to be his “satisfaction”—it is an act that demonstrates his turning completely from his sin. One of the remarkable aspects of the first part of Canto 31 is the way it repeats, and in some ways perfects, the actions of Canto 5 of the Inferno. The allusion to the earlier canto begins in line 10, when Beatrice demands of the pilgrim, “What are you thinking of?” These are the very words addressed to the pilgrim by his other guide, Virgil, in the Inferno (5, l. 111) when he stood, as he does here, speechless with his head bowed. There the pilgrim was overwhelmed with pity for Francesca’s story of her

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ill-fated love of Paolo. Ultimately overcome by his sympathy for the sinful lovers, the pilgrim swoons. In this canto it is an overwhelming guilt over precisely the kind of misdirected love for which he had felt his earlier sympathy that causes the pilgrim’s speechless posture and, again, makes him faint. This time his feelings are in line with truth, and the discourse of the woman he responds to is direct, honest, and beneficial, as opposed to Francesca’s enticing, calculated, Siren-like words. The culmination of the pilgrim’s confession scene occurs as he awakens and is drawn by Matelda into the river. Here he receives his absolution, the act that completes his sacrament of penance, this time with Matelda acting as priest—this is, apparently, a role she serves for all the penitent sinners who have completed their satisfaction on the mountain. The pilgrim hears the words Asperges me (the full verse is “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow,” from Psalm 51.7, NRSV), sung presumably by the angels. These are the words repeated by the priest during the rite of absolution, when he blesses the penitent with holy water. The fact that Dante is immersed rather than sprinkled suggests a kind of baptism (though it should be noted that the act here cannot be taken as a literal baptism, since that sacrament is only to take place once). As in a baptism (and as suggested by the swoon from which he has just recovered) the pilgrim here dies to his old self and is reborn as a newly saved soul—one who, having drunk from the stream of Lethe, has wiped out the memory of his former sins. The second part of the canto records a series of highly symbolic allegorical rituals that serve to welcome the pilgrim—who now has crossed to the sacred shore—into Paradise. First he dances with the four cardinal virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance) that are identified with the four stars the pilgrim had seen earlier (in Canto 1, ll. 23–24, and Canto 8, l. 91). They are presented as Beatrice’s handmaids from before her descent from Heaven. Theologians made a distinction between the infused cardinal virtues (those born into a person) and the acquired cardinal virtues (those learned in life). Only Adam and Eve had possessed the infused virtues; the marring of human nature

caused by original sin meant that all other human beings had to acquire these virtues. Thus to say that these virtues were Beatrice’s even before she was born makes sense only if we consider Beatrice’s allegorical meaning as Sapientia or divine wisdom. In Proverbs 9.1 Wisdom is said to have “built her house, she has set up her seven pillars” (NRSV): the seven pillars were traditionally interpreted allegorically as the seven virtues. In the dance the pilgrim seems to acquire the four cardinal virtues, which seem to prepare him to receive the revelation he will see in Beatrice’s eyes. The pilgrim looks into Beatrice’s eyes as they look directly at the griffin. Here the green eyes are the color of hope, and they recall Dante’s earlier dream of Rachel in Canto 27, thus highlighting her allegorical meaning as the contemplative life. Reflected in her eyes the pilgrim sees the griffin (as the figure of Christ) alternating between his divine nature and his human nature, while the griffin itself remains unchanged as half-eagle and halflion. Here Dante seems to dramatize the words of Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 13.12: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face” (NRSV). Thus Beatrice, as the contemplative life, contemplates the great mystery of Christ’s dual nature as God and man and, in her role as revelation, reveals that nature to the pilgrim. As the canto ends, the three theological virtues (Faith, Hope, and Love, as enumerated in that same chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians) approach Beatrice and persuade her to look directly upon the pilgrim and remove her veil. Having seen in the mirror dimly, the pilgrim now sees her face-to-face, and the smile she bestows upon him suggests divine love and the grace of salvation. Canto 32, the longest Canto in the Comedy, opens with the pilgrim’s blinding gaze upon the face of his beloved Beatrice. The three theological virtues pull his gaze away from her, warning that his stare is too intense. Some critics have suggested that the virtues are scolding him for dwelling too intently on Beatrice’s human beauty. But since Beatrice has already chastised Dante for his love of transient things in the previous cantos, it seems more likely that this episode is allegorical. If Beatrice suggests the truth of Divine Wisdom, the virtues may be

Purgatorio warning the pilgrim that he cannot expect to drink in this truth all at once—he will need all of Paradise to learn what Beatrice has to offer. When the procession turns around and the pilgrim follows with Statius (mentioned here for the first time since Canto 28), the poet uses military language, calling the pageant a “glorious host” (l. 16) and comparing it in an epic simile to a retreating squadron (l. 19). The imagery indicates that the procession now no longer represents the Church Triumphant, but rather the Church Militant, the historical church in the world. The poets follow the pageant to the barren tree, which is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Here, after being blessed by the procession, the griffin utters his only speech in the pageant— words that echo those spoken by Christ to John the Baptist in Matthew 3.15: “It is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness” (NRSV). The words suggest the submission of the griffin/Christ to the sacrifice that will atone for Adam’s sin and redeem mankind. When he attaches the cross-shaped pole of the chariot to the tree, the tree bursts into life, the foliage suggesting new life (both for the individual sinner and for mankind in general), on one level, and on another—with its color between crimson and purple—the sacrificial blood of Christ. The allegory suggests, first, that the church (the chariot) is led by the true cross (the pole), and, second, that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross reversed the sin of Adam and Eve in the Earthly Paradise. The imagery also recalls the medieval legend (recorded in the 13th-century French prose Quest of the Holy Grail as well as Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend and other texts) that the wood of Christ’s cross was formed from a tree grown from a cutting of the Tree of Knowledge taken by Adam and Eve out of Eden. The connection of the cross with the Tree of Knowledge underscores the connection between Christ’s sacrifice and Adam’s sin. Dante compares the sleep that overcomes the pilgrim at this point to that of the disciples Peter, John, and James, who fell to the ground awe-struck after seeing the transfiguration of Christ (Matthew 17.1–8). That transfiguration, in which Christ appeared to the disciples in a shining white garment between Moses and Elijah, was (like the grif-

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fin’s transformation of the tree) a revelation of his divine nature. Like the disciples Dante awakens to find the glory somewhat diminished. In Matthew Christ has returned to his everyday appearance and Moses and Elijah have disappeared; here the griffin has disappeared with most of the pageant, and when the pilgrim sees Matelda’s face he fears Beatrice has left as well, but he finds her sitting on the ground, surrounded by the seven virtues. Beatrice essentially assures Dante of his salvation, then directs him to observe carefully what happens to the chariot, so that he can record the events when he returns to the world. Her words recall those of the angel to the apostle John in the book of Revelation 1.11: “Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches” (NRSV). Thus Dante depicts his role as a prophetic one, and the journey now explicitly moves from being the individual quest of the pilgrim to one with universal significance. After the griffin has departed (as Christ ascended to God the Father after the resurrection), the chariot of the Church Militant is left to deal with the world, and what the pilgrim Dante witnesses next is an allegorical reenactment of seven great catastrophes that have befallen the historical Church Militant up to Dante’s time. The first of these, the imperial eagle’s attack on the chariot, represents the 10 major persecutions of the church under the Roman emperors from Nero to Diocletian. The second, the fox that leaps into the chariot, represents the internal threat to the church caused by early heresies (like Gnosticism and Arianism). It is Beatrice, in her role as Divine Wisdom, who chases away the fox of heresy. The third affliction involves the return of the eagle, whose feathers now adorn the chariot itself. This represents the Donation of Constantine, the legendary grant that the emperor Constantine was reputed to have made to Pope Sylvester I in the early fourth century, ceding to the pope and his successors all temporal power in Western Europe. For Dante the Donation (exposed in the renaissance as an eighth-century forgery) was a disaster for the church, introducing to the papacy the corruption of power and wealth. He makes the point in De monarchia that rich possessions violated the true essence of the church.

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The fourth affliction is central to the history as Dante presents it and appears to be the most dangerous. The tail of the great serpent splits the chariot and pulls part of the cart away when it draws back. Again the book of Revelation is Dante’s inspiration, where a great dragon appears in the sky and “his tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth” (12.4). Here the allegory seems to refer to the advent of Islam, seen as a heresy by medieval Europeans—a heresy that drew off a third of orthodox Christians. For this Muhammad is punished among the sowers of discord in Canto 28 of the Inferno. In a sense this parallels the second affliction of heresy. With the fifth affliction more eagle feathers cover the entire chariot, including the wheels and the cross itself. This parallels the third affliction and represents further riches and secular power granted to the church during the reigns of the Frankish kings Pepin and Charlemagne. The sixth affliction (like the fourth) owes its inspiration to Revelation 13.1: “And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads.” As does the beast of Revelation, the chariot itself becomes a monster, sprouting seven heads. Most commentators believe these represent the seven deadly sins, which grew in the church once it had given itself over to worldly wealth and power. The final affliction depicted is, allegorically, the most complex, and Dante describes it in four tercets rather than in two, as he does the others. The scantily clothed strumpet who rides in the chariot is the whore of Babylon from the book of Revelation, “with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication” (17.2). For Dante the whore symbolizes the papacy, and the “fornication” alludes almost certainly to Boniface VIII’s collusion with the French monarchy in sending Charles of Valois to Florence in 1301. The giant in Dante’s scene suggests Philip the Fair, and his beating of the whore and carrying her and the chariot off into the woods represent Philip’s seizure of Boniface at Anagni in 1301, and the subsequent removal of the papal seat from Rome to Avignon by Pope Clement V in 1309. One unsettled question involves the whore’s lustful gaze toward the pilgrim Dante in line 154,

for which the giant beats her. Some commentators believe that the pilgrim at this point represents all of Italy, on which the pope looks greedily. Others have suggested that the pilgrim here represents the true Christian, who should be the concern of the papacy, though the entanglements of power do not enable that concern to bear fruit as the giant intercedes. The opening of Canto 33 reads like a liturgical service, as the seven virtues antiphonally sing a psalm that Beatrice answers in the words of Christ from John’s gospel. The words of the psalm—“O God, the nations have come into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins” (79.1, NRSV)—allude to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C.E. The implication seems to be that the church, the modern-day Temple associated with the chariot, has been destroyed by the modern-day Nebuchadnezzar, King Philip of France. Dante compares the mournful Beatrice, listening to the virtues’ lament, with Mary at the Crucifixion—a comparison that seems less bold when we recognize that the church is the body of Christ in the world, making its contemporary destruction tantamount to a second crucifixion. When Beatrice speaks, it is with the words Christ used to announce his death and resurrection to his followers: “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me” (John 16.16, NRSV). In her response to the psalm therefore Beatrice prophesies that the church, like Christ himself, will rise in triumph from this present sorrow—a theme that continues through the canto. As Beatrice begins to walk with the pilgrim and to explain the vision he has just witnessed, Beatrice’s words take on a prophetic obscurity, recalling once again the book of Revelation. When she refers to the chariot in lines 34–35 as something that “was and is not,” she echoes the voice of the angel of the Apocalypse who explains John’s vision of the beast in this way: The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the inhabitants of the

Purgatorio earth, whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will be amazed when they see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come. (Revelation 17.8, NRSV)

So the church was and is not—that is, the true church no longer exists, having been corrupted by wealth and worldliness and dragged off to its “Babylonian Captivity” by the giant. But Beatrice’s allusion implies that the church also “is to come,” that is, will return to its former pure state. This is because the eagle will not long be without an heir. The eagle symbolizes the emperor, and for Dante, the last legitimate emperor had been Frederick II, who died in 1250. Dante lived in anticipation that a strong leader would emerge and ascend the Imperial throne, restoring order to the Empire and to the church as well. Beatrice’s enigmatic numerological code for the identity of the true heir of the Caesars—“five hundred and ten and five”—adds to the apocalyptic tone of this canto by recalling the number of the beast from the book of Revelation (13.18). But the identity of the figure designated by this number is obscure. Some commentators, writing the number as a Roman numeral, DXV, have reversed the last two letters to get DVX (i.e., dux), the Latin word for a secular leader. Most scholars assume that Dante intends this to refer to the Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg, who had entered Italy in 1310 but died of malaria in August 1313. Beatrice (from the viewpoint of Easter 1300) speaks of the advent of the eagle’s heir as a future event that will be unstoppable (ll. 40–42). This would suggest that Dante probably wrote this canto after 1310, but before Henry’s death in 1313. But since it seems likely that the Purgatorio was completed about 1318, this canto is almost certainly later than Henry’s death, and it may simply express some unidentified hope for the future of Dante. On an anagogical level, however, Beatrice’s prophecy of the coming world Emperor alludes as well to the Second Coming of Christ, who will be the ultimate emperor and will restore all to its right order. Beatrice admits that her words are obscure now but says that time will clarify their meaning. She

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tells the pilgrim to report them carefully when he writes this down, and particularly wants him to note what he has seen of the Tree of Knowledge, which she calls “twice-despoiled”: Adam was the first to despoil the tree, but Beatrice implies that the tree, which flowered again after its restoration by the griffin/Christ, has been despoiled again by the actions of the eagle, the dragon, and the giant. Beatrice goes on to discuss the height and shape of the tree, alluding to Dante’s own polysemous or multileveled allegory by speaking of the tree’s “moral” or tropological significance (l. 71). The tree’s height indicates how far beyond human understanding is the ultimate knowledge of good and evil. The shape of the tree—its inverted branches that spread wider the higher up the tree one goes—makes it impossible for man to climb, and thus underscores the justice of God’s prohibition of that which is beyond mankind’s ability to achieve. Beatrice goes on to apply this moral lesson to Dante himself: Much has been made prior to this of Dante’s desertion of Beatrice after her death. On the literal level he was lured away by the “window woman” of the Vita nuova. On the figurative level Dante abandoned theological knowledge for philosophy (in composing the unfinished Convivio) and thus was swayed by the belief that he could rely on human knowledge rather than Divine Wisdom. Charles Singleton cites Thomas Aquinas to explain why such an attempt could not be successful: Sacred doctrine derives its principles not from any human knowledge, but from the divine knowledge, through which, as through the highest wisdom, all our knowledge is set in order. (ST 1, q. 1, a. 6, ad. 1)

Beatrice, the allegorical figure of that Divine Wisdom, chides the pilgrim for his neglect. When Dante says he does not recall ever forsaking Beatrice, she reminds him he has just drunk from Lethe, which wipes out all memory of sin. The fact that the pilgrim cannot remember demonstrates clearly that his forgetting her must have been a sin—and a sin specifically related to Adam’s attempt to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. As this final canto draws to a close, we finally hear Matelda’s name revealed from the lips of

172 Paradiso Beatrice, and Matelda’s function in the Earthly Paradise is finally clarified. The fact that Statius is present here, and that Matelda washes both Statius and Dante in the waters of the Eunoë, implies that Matelda’s function as the “active life” is to take all souls, purged from their time on the mountain, and baptize them first in the Lethe (to wipe away their wrongful acts) and then in the Eunoë (to restore the memory of their virtuous acts). Since Beatrice has no particular interaction with Statius, it must be assumed that her presence here—and the entire pageant of the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant—has been solely for the sake of the pilgrim (as her appeal to Virgil was a special request aimed only at Dante). It must be assumed that Statius goes on from here directly to his eternal reward in the Empyrean, which Dante will glimpse at the end of the next canticle. The pilgrim, however, has learned that his journey is not really for himself alone, but that the vision must be recorded and shared with his fellow souls in the living world. The Purgatorio ends as the pilgrim rises from the restorative waters of the stream and returns to Beatrice “reborn, a tree renewed, in bloom / with newborn foliage, immaculate, / eager to rise, now ready for the stars” (ll. 143–145). The words relate Dante to the Tree of Knowledge itself, restored through Christ’s sacrifice. They also recall the conclusion of the first canto of the Purgatorio, when Dante had plucked the reed from the edge of a different river and was amazed by the miraculous growth of another plant, which immediately replaced the one Virgil had plucked (1, l. 135– 136). Thus the canticle concludes by reaffirming one of the chief themes of this middle section of the poem: the theme of rebirth or renewal. The act of penance—the basic model for Dante’s construction of Purgatory—is an act of renewal, through which sin is atoned for, divine justice satisfied, and the penitent soul newly purified, ready to go and sin no more. In the pilgrim’s case he is ready to move on to the stars—the Paradise that will be the setting of the third canticle of the Comedy. Like the Inferno the Purgatorio concludes with the word stella (stars), highlighting the pilgrim’s (and the reader’s) upward progress toward God, the ultimate goal of the entire journey.

Paradiso (1327) The Paradiso is both Dante’s highest poetic achievement and his most difficult text. The difficulty stems from two separate causes. In the first place this third canticle directly addresses difficult theological issues to a much larger extent than the INFERNO or the PURGATORIO. Dante is well aware of this difficulty, as he tells the reader at the beginning of his second canto that unless he is well grounded in philosophy and theology, the reader should not try to follow in Dante’s wake as he sails through the difficulty seas of this final canticle. He immediately plunges into difficult cosmological questions and follows these by discourses on the resurrection of the body, the role of the stars and heredity in shaping personality, the need for a variety of functions to be performed in the ideal society, and the question of divine justice—how can pagans be consigned to Hell when they have not had the opportunity to learn of Christ? Toward the end of the Paradiso the pilgrim is required to demonstrate his mastery of theology in a series of examinations, conducted by the apostles Peter, John, and James, concerning his understanding of the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. Such understanding seems here to be a prerequisite to the pilgrim’s ultimate vision of the godhead, the final goal of his long journey. The Paradiso’s other difficulty arises from the struggle that religious mystics have always had in relating their visions to a mundane audience: The experience of heavenly union—even of a fictionalized mystical vision like the one Dante presents—is ineffable. Language is the human way of expressing the sense impressions, experiences, thoughts, and arguments of the physical world as experienced by the human mind. An experience that takes place outside the body in a spiritual plane of existence is inexpressible in human language—a fact that Dante asserts through the “inexpressibility topos” in his first canto: “I have been in His brightest shining heaven / and seen such things that no man, once returned / from there, has wit or skill to tell about” (Canto 1, ll. 4–6). This theme of the indescribable nature of Heaven is underscored again and again throughout the Paradiso, culminating in the pilgrim’s final

Paradiso vision of God, wherein he receives a “great flash of understanding” that he never attempts to put into words (Canto 33, l. 140). Throughout the Paradiso, however, Dante does attempt to describe his experience in two ways. First, he depicts the pilgrim’s visions as concessions to his limited understanding, and the limited understanding of his readers. When he meets the souls of the blessed among the various spheres of the heavens, his guide Beatrice explains to him that the souls are really not here, but remain in the Empyrean Heaven in the presence of God. They have been in a sense projected to these spheres in order to help the pilgrim Dante understand the hierarchy of Heaven. Thus the entire first 30 cantos of the Paradiso are a kind of divine allegory, representing the abstract truth of Heaven in concrete images. These images include the great crusader’s cross formed by the souls of the warriors of God in the sphere of Mars, the Roman imperial eagle formed by the just rulers in the sphere of Jupiter, and the golden ladder on which the souls of the contemplatives move up and down in the sphere of Saturn. Dante’s second way of dealing with the inexpressibility problem is through innovations and experiments with his language. If normal human language cannot describe the experience of Heaven, then perhaps Dante can invent new ways of using language that are better able to convey his meaning. Thus it is in the Paradiso where Dante is the most daring and most creative in his use of poetic language. He invents more new words here than in all his other poetry. Often he employs function shifts—transforming nouns or adjectives into verbs. Often he creates new words by adding new prefixes, many using the prefix in- to suggest the piercing of normal physical limits, or the prefix tras- (English trans-) to imply going beyond mundane boundaries. Such innovations are most difficult to render in translation, but in this manner Dante manages in an astounding way to describe the indescribable. The basic structure of this Heaven Dante describes is fairly conventional, relying on the Ptolemaic and Aristotelian model of the geocentric universe. According to this model Earth is at the center of the cosmos and is orbited by nine crystal-

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line spheres. Each of these concentric spheres is composed of a special heavenly substance called ether, and each of the first seven spheres contains as well one of the seven planets: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in order from Earth outward. The eighth sphere contains all of the fixed stars, while the ninth sphere, called the Primum Mobile, sets all the other spheres in motion. Beyond the Primum Mobile is the Empyrean Heaven, a realm of pure light that is the home of God and the true eternal home of all the souls of the blessed, beyond the motions of the spheres that regulate time and create space. In Dante’s Christian vision God governs the motions of these spheres through a hierarchy of “intelligences”—his angels, whose movements, in perfect accord with the will of God, work out that will through astral influence on the natural world. According to Dante’s scheme the nine orders of angels are divided into three groups of intelligences, each containing three orders of angels—as always in the Comedy a reflection of the Trinity. The first three angelic orders—the Angels, Archangels, and Principalities, governing the Moon, Mercury, and Venus—contemplate God as the Holy Spirit. The second three—Powers, Virtues, and Dominions, governing the Sun, Mars, and Jupiter—contemplate God as the Son. The final three—Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, governing Saturn, the fixed stars, and the Primum Mobile—contemplate God as the Father. This picture of the universe allows Dante to create a structure for his Paradiso that mirrors the structure of the first two canticles. As the first nine cantos of the Inferno deal with the pilgrim’s journey before reaching walls of the city of Dis that contain Lower Hell, and the first nine cantos of the Purgatorio depict the pilgrim’s journey through the Ante-Purgatory before reaching the gates of Purgatory proper, so here the first nine cantos deal with the lower section of Heaven—the first three spheres that lie within the conical shadow of the Earth. The souls within these spheres are accordingly still touched by certain mundane imperfections. Similarly the final cantos of the Paradiso, describing Dante’s final examination, his encounter with Saint Bernard, his view of the Mystic Rose,

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and his final vision of God, are set apart from the rest of the Paradiso in the same way as the final cantos of the Inferno—portraying the frozen bottom of Hell containing Satan himself—and of the Purgatorio—depicting the Earthly Paradise and Dante’s encounter with Beatrice—are set apart in their own respective texts. Thus Dante is careful to maintain a three-part structure for each of his three canticles. What disturbs many contemporary readers about the hierarchical structure of Dante’s Heaven is the necessary conclusion that the souls of the blessed enjoy different gradations of heavenly bliss. All the souls in Dante’s Heaven enjoy God’s love and grace, but it appears that this love and grace are not distributed equally. Even though, as Beatrice will assert, all souls have their home in God’s presence in the Empyrean Heaven, their metaphorical appearance in ascending order in the different heavenly spheres demonstrates the different grades of their beatitude. Dante the pilgrim himself finds this somewhat disturbing and raises the question in Canto 3 with PICCARDA DONATI, whom he finds in the sphere of the Moon, asking her whether the souls of this sphere have any desire to climb higher in the heavenly rankings. Her answer informs the remainder of the canticle. Each individual human soul has a different capacity for grace, love, and blessedness. It is God’s will that there be degrees of blessedness in Heaven, and through the mystery of predestination he creates each individual human soul with its own unique capacity for grace. Just as human society needs a variety of talents to create the ideal commonwealth, so Heaven would be lacking in some measure—the individual human personality would be lost—if all souls were absolutely equal here. Because each soul receives all the bliss he or she is capable of, no soul is envious of another, and because this is Heaven, all souls are in concord with the will of God. The Paradiso is indeed an intellectual challenge, but generations of readers have found the challenge to be worth the reward. Above all the canticle is a comforting one, in which the pilgrim—as himself but also representing everyman—receives assurances of his own salvation. It ends with the memory of heavenly bliss, and an eagerness to regain that

experience. It may well be that Dante’s poem is the closest expression of that experience ever achieved in human language.

ENTRY TO PARADISE: SPHERE OF FIRE AND MUSIC OF THE SPHERES (CANTO 1) Synopsis At the beginning of the Paradiso the narrator claims to have been to Heaven itself, and while it is impossible for the human memory to store such images, or for human skill to express them in language, he declares that Paradise will now indeed be the subject of his song. He invokes the god Apollo to make him worthy of such a task, asserting that if he is successful, he will crown himself with the sacred laurel. In language understood by students of astronomy in his time Dante refers to the Sun rising from the place where the “four circles” meet to form the “three crosses” (l. 39)—suggesting that it is noon in Purgatory at some time near the vernal equinox. Dante observes Beatrice looking straight into the Sun and instinctively follows her gaze, and it seems to him that he sees a second sun emerge in the sky. He moves his eyes back to gaze upon Beatrice, and as he does so, he feels himself change to become somehow more than human in a way that he cannot describe. Looking up, he sees all of Heaven ablaze and hears the harmonious music of the spheres as he passes through the sphere of fire. The pilgrim looks to Beatrice to tell him what is happening. She points out to him that he is no longer standing on Earth but soaring upward faster than the speed of lightning. The pilgrim questions how his body is able to ascend through the air, and Beatrice explains the situation to him as to an ignorant child. She declares that the universe is perfectly ordered, and that all things instinctively seek their proper place in this cosmic order. The love that characterizes the human intellect draws human beings naturally to God in the highest Heaven. But (as Virgil had explained in Canto 17 of the Purgatorio) the human soul may err through love misdirected and therefore may hold one down. Having purged himself of the weight of all sin by passing through Purgatory, the purified and hence weightless Dante is now able to rise through the heavens.

Paradiso Commentary Dante is about to relate a vision of Heaven itself, and while his account is surely fictional rather than the kind of mystical vision that might be related by someone like Julian of Norwich, for example, he does adopt the language of the mystic by evoking the “inexpressibility topos”—the convention that mystical experiences are essentially ineffable. In this he follows the precedent of Saint Paul, who in 2 Corinthians 12.3–4 asserts, “And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat” (NRSV). As he had in the Inferno and the Purgatorio he begins the Paradiso with an invocation, but this time, needing greater divine aid for his most difficult task, he invokes not classical Muses but their father, Apollo—the god of poetry himself. Dante follows the classical tradition that the Muses lived on the peak of Mount Parnassus known as Nisa, while Apollo himself dwelled on the other peak, Cyrrha. Dante expresses the hope that his poetic skill will reach its greatest heights in this last canticle of the Comedy and will earn him the laurel crown—sacred to Apollo and the ancient symbol of military victory as well as poetic achievement. The difficult and convoluted description of the position of the Sun in lines 37–44 needs explaining. The Sun rises from a different point on the horizon at different times during the year. On the spring equinox the Sun rises from a point where the circle of the horizon intersects three other great circles: the celestial equator, the circle of the ecliptic (the apparent path of the Sun through the sky), and the circle that astrologers called the equinoctial colure—a circle that passed through the two equinoctial points on the horizon (in Aries and Libra) and through the two poles of the celestial sphere. These three circles met on the horizon at the point of the vernal equinox, and as they crossed one another made three crosses (suggesting the cross of Christ as well as the Holy Trinity). Some commentators believe that the four circles and three crosses are also intended to symbolize the four cardinal and three theological virtues.

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This point of intersection is in the constellation of Aries, the Sun’s most favorable constellation because it was the one in which the Sun moved at the time of the creation of the world. All of this suggests a very auspicious sunrise, though it must be noted that since Dante began his journey on Good Friday 1300, reaching Purgatory on Easter morning, and has spent three nights on the mountain, the day on which the Paradiso begins is in fact Wednesday, April 13, and not the vernal equinox. However, since the Sun is in Aries from March 21 through April 20, the benevolent influence of that constellation still reigns, and perhaps Dante alludes to the intersection of the four circles in order to suggest the scientific background for the sanguine influence of Aries. When Dante looks up along with Beatrice and sees the Sun so bright that he believes God has made a second sun, the point seems to be that he is rising through the air, moving closer to the Sun without knowing it. When he speaks of what is happening to him, he uses the term transumanar (l. 70), literally “transhumanize,” or pass beyond what is human. This refers not only to the physical state of soaring into the heavens, but to the spiritual condition of grace infused from God—the sanctifying grace that (among other things) Beatrice represents. Having shed the weight of all impurity, Dante moves naturally toward the Empyrean, the highest Heaven, and the face of God. How this can happen is the topic of most of the rest of the canto. As Saint Paul is in the verse quoted earlier, Dante is unable to state with any certainty whether he ascended to Heaven in the flesh or whether only his soul made the journey— and that issue remains a mystery throughout the Paradiso. In lines 78–80 the pilgrim hears the music of the spheres, which is the sweet musical harmony created by the turning of the nine heavenly spheres as an expression of the cosmic harmony of God’s creation. He also passes through the “sphere of fire”—a region that, according to medieval astronomy, lay between the Earth and the Moon, and that was the source of lightning, which (contrary to the natural tendency of fire to rise upward) strikes downward at the Earth from this sphere. The pilgrim is bewildered, but his confusion over what

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is happening to him is answered by Beatrice, who (like other spirits Dante will meet in Heaven) has the ability to read his mind and can respond to his question before he asks it. There is nothing particularly new in Beatrice’s explanation. The middle cantos of the Purgatorio, particularly Virgil’s discourse on love in Canto 17, provide a good deal of background for Beatrice’s account here. She begins by asserting the perfect order of the universe, already demonstrated in the music of the spheres. She then expounds what is known as the principle of teleology, which holds that God created each thing for a particular purpose, and thus all things are naturally drawn toward their ordained goals or ends through the force of God’s love within them. Thus fire is naturally drawn upward (to the sphere of fire), or parts of the Earth to the Earth’s center (a kind of “love” that today we call gravity). The natural goal of beings (such as humans and angels) who have both intellect and free will is the Empyrean, God’s eternal realm that lies beyond the last moving sphere of the heavens. Impelled by their instinctive love of God, Dante and Beatrice are being drawn upward toward that Heaven. Using the image of an artist trying to create a perfect form with imperfect materials (ll. 127–132), Beatrice concedes that people may sometimes err through their free will—they may, as Virgil had explained, err through misplaced love of worldly things, which causes sin. But having been purified of sin in his climb of Mount Purgatory, Dante is ready for natural love to pull him toward God.

LOWER PARADISE (CANTOS 2–9) Synopsis As Canto 2 opens, Dante warns the reader who may have kept up with him this far not to attempt to follow him into what he calls the deep waters of his voyage, unless that reader is prepared intellectually and spiritually to follow. The poet now invokes Minerva, goddess of wisdom, as well as Apollo and the Muses, to guide his poem. Dante’s eyes are on Beatrice while hers are fixed above as the two shoot into the sky faster than an arrow, until they arrive at the first sphere, the sphere of the Moon, which Dante pictures as a

smooth diamondlike object. Here the pilgrim is amazed to find that he and Beatrice are taken into the Moon itself as light enters water, he says, or as God became human flesh in the Incarnation— there is no disruption of the substance they have entered. Curious at seeing the Moon’s smooth surface, Dante asks Beatrice the cause of the markings on the Moon that in Dante’s Italy were called Cain and his thorn bush. Beatrice first asks the pilgrim his own opinion of the matter. Dante suggests that the cause may be differing densities in the Moon’s surface. Beatrice first refutes this idea with several counterarguments of her own, until Dante is convinced of his human error. She then explains the true reason: The essence or light of God that flows into the universe from the Empyrean Heaven is differentiated in the sphere of the fixed stars according to the different qualities or virtues of the stars themselves. This spreads through the rest of the spheres and the angelic intelligences who inhabit and move them (as a soul does a body). Each heavenly sphere and its intelligence receive the light of God in accordance with their own inherent virtue—its degree of joy in beholding the face of God. These varying virtues are reflected in the differing degrees of brightness in the heavenly bodies. In the case of the Moon there is no single virtue but varying degrees of quality, influenced perhaps by a variety of angelic intelligences. Canto 3 opens as the pilgrim, recognizing his error concerning the Moon’s markings, raises his eyes to concede the truth of Beatrice’s explanation. But before he can speak, his attention is diverted by the pale images around him of faces that he takes to be reflections. He looks behind him but is puzzled when he sees no one there, and when he turns back Beatrice is smiling at his error. These faces are not reflections but the faces of the spirits of real people, those who in life had broken their religious vows and thus were assigned to this level of Paradise. They appear eager to speak and Beatrice encourages Dante to converse with them, saying they are filled with the light of God. The pilgrim addresses the closest spirit to him, who seems most eager to speak. She tells the pilgrim that he ought to remember her—she is Pic-

Paradiso    177 carda Donati, assigned to this lowest sphere of Heaven because she had forsaken her life as a nun. The pilgrim asks whether any of the spirits in this lowest sphere wish for a higher place in Heaven. Piccarda replies that the heavenly love within them makes them desire only the level to which the will of God has assigned them, for in God’s will is their peace. She then recounts how in life she took the veil at a young age, devoting herself to Christ, but was forced by hateful men (in fact her own brother, Corso) to leave the convent. She then introduces the shade of the woman beside her, Empress Constance, wife of Henry VI and mother of the Emperor Frederick II. Legend said that Constance had been a nun in her youth but had been forced out of the nunnery to marry Henry. According to Piccarda, though, Constance retained the veil in her heart the rest of her days. With that Piccarda fades back among the other shades, chanting an Ave Maria, upon which the pilgrim turns back to Beatrice, whose brightness is momentarily too much for his eyes to bear. The things he has heard from Piccarda have raised questions in the pilgrim’s mind, and as Canto 4 opens he stands poised between two nagging doubts, not knowing which to mention first. He is helped by Beatrice, who (as she did earlier) is able to read the pilgrim’s thoughts. She articulates both the pilgrim’s questions: First, can a just God reduce the heavenly reward of someone who, like Piccarda, was forced to commit an act against her will? And, second, if Constance and Piccarda are assigned here to the Moon, was Plato correct in his assertion that each soul returns at death to the star where it originated? Beatrice then addresses the second question, since as she says it is the more “poisonous” of the two. All saved souls—whether the Virgin Mary or Piccarda Donati—are assigned to the same Heaven, she asserts, and enjoy the bliss of Heaven to the extent that they are capable. These spirits have appeared here in the sphere of the Moon as a symbol of their degree of blessedness, not because they are permanently assigned here. As with the metaphorical language of scripture, this is a way of allowing the human mind to understand spiritual truths.

The Moon, from Canto 3 of the Paradiso, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

If Plato intended his doctrine of souls expressed in the Timaeus literally, then he was wrong, Beatrice says. If he was speaking figuratively to imply that the stars influence the lives of humans, then what he says is acceptable. The pilgrim’s other doubt, Beatrice tells him, is less likely to lead to heresy. The free will of Piccarda or Constance, Beatrice says, may not have contributed to the specific act that tore them from the nunnery, but an absolutely steadfast will could have returned them to the cloister when they were released. But Beatrice now forestalls another possible difficulty for the pilgrim: Piccarda had claimed that the empress Constance remained devoted to the veil (implying that her will never wavered), while Beatrice had said that her will was not completely constant. One seems to contradict the other, and Beatrice has already told the pilgrim that souls in Heaven do not lie.

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There are, Beatrice explains, both an absolute will and a conditioned will—one that in response to circumstances (e.g., fear of greater harm or hope of averting harm) might assent to evil. Constance’s absolute will never gave up the veil, but her conditioned will consented to her marriage. Thus Piccarda and Beatrice were both telling the truth. Satisfied with these answers, the pilgrim approaches Beatrice with yet another question that has been inspired by her explanation. The innate human desire for spiritual truth causes new questions to spring up like shoots at the foot of each new truth, the pilgrim explains. He asks Beatrice whether people might compensate for a broken vow by any number of good deeds, so that God might blame them less. As Beatrice prepares to answer him, her eyes are so full of divine love that the pilgrim nearly swoons. In Canto 5 Beatrice explains her increasing radiance, which was so stunning to the pilgrim at the close of the previous canto, as the result of her perfected vision, which draws her relentlessly toward the perfect love of the Highest Good and glows more brightly the closer she approaches to that Good. Looking into Dante’s mind, she sees that his own capability of understanding God is increasing as well. She also sees there Dante’s question about whether a soul can compensate for breaking a vow. Free will, Beatrice explains, is God’s greatest gift to man. The great value of a vow is that the human being, of his or her own free will, sacrifices that will (that greatest gift) to God. There is nothing that can compensate for this greatest of gifts. But under some circumstances the church releases people from their vows, Beatrice explains further. There are two aspects of a vow: the act itself and its sacred nature. Nothing can change the latter of these, the nature of the vow; one might, however, change the required act, or the substance of the vow. If one is to do this, however, the church itself must agree to the substitution, and the substitution must be of more value than what was originally vowed. Finally Beatrice warns against making rash, thoughtless, or foolish vows, citing the Old Testament figure of Jephthah and the classical story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia as warnings. Let the church and scripture guide you, Beatrice concludes.

With that Beatrice and the pilgrim ascend with uncanny speed from the sphere of the Moon to enter into the second Heaven, that of Mercury. Here they are surrounded by a thousand radiant beings, overjoyed to have more souls to add to their blessedness. One soul, recognizing Dante as a living being who has been granted the privilege of seeing the eternal realms “before abandoning the war of life” (l. 117), offers to answer any question the pilgrim might have. The pilgrim asks who the luminous soul is, and why he has been assigned to this particular sphere. The spirit glows even more brightly for joy and begins his answer, which will include the following canto. The radiant soul who has addressed the pilgrim identifies himself at the beginning of the sixth Canto as the sixth-century emperor JUSTINIAN I, and his speech fills the entire canto. He implies that before his conversion by Pope Agapetus I, he had adhered to the Monophysite heresy (which held that Christ had only a single, divine nature). Once converted, Justinian says, he gave his general Belisarius the task of leading his army and devoted himself to his great project (presumably the codification of Roman law, for which he is best remembered). Thus, Justinian says, he has answered the pilgrim’s first question—he has told who he is. Before moving to the second question—why he is in this sphere—Justinian feels the need to recount the history of the imperial eagle, revered symbol of the empire. It stayed in Alba Longa, where Aeneas’s son, Ascanius, had established it, for 300 years, until Romulus moved it to the hills of Rome. There it remained through seven kings until the Tarquins were deposed after the rape of LUCRECE and a republic was established in 510 B.C.E. It was carried by the armies of the republic against the Gauls (under Brennius), the Greeks (under Pyrrhus), and the Carthaginians (under Hannibal), reaching great heights under Scipio and Pompey and greater conquests under Caesar. Justinian recounts Caesar’s victories in some detail, mentioning his visit to Troy (the symbolic return of the eagle to its homeland), his defeat of Pompey and later of Pompey’s sons in Spain, his conquest of Juba, his defeat of Ptolemy, and ultimately his murder. With Augustus the eagle extends peace to

Paradiso the world as far as the Red Sea. But all of this pales before the chief event of the reign of Augustus’s successor, Tiberius—that is, the Crucifixion: Under the Roman eagle Divine Justice expiated the sin of Adam using the Roman eagle as its instrument. Further, under Titus, the Roman eagle punished the Jews for that death by destroying Jerusalem. Justinian now skips over seven centuries, including his own reign, to focus on Charlemagne’s defense of the church against the Lombards, thus identifying the Holy Roman Emperor with the sacred eagle of ancient Rome. Having demonstrated the connection of the imperial eagle with the ideal of Christian society, Justinian now looks at the contemporary heirs of the empire and condemns the GHIBELLINES (who claim the eagle standard as their own) and the GUELPHS (who set up a standard of yellow lilies against it). The Ghibellines, who claim to be true followers of the standard, lack justice, its necessary component. And the “new Charles” (CHARLES II OF ANJOU) is wrong to think he can tear down the banner of the eagle. Justinian now answers the pilgrim’s second question. The sphere of Mercury, he says, is peopled by souls whose deeds were prompted not solely by the love of God but also by the desire for fame. As a result of this desire these souls have a smaller capacity for bliss than others in higher spheres, but all is part of God’s justice and, as are the souls in the Moon, the ambitious souls of this sphere are content and part of the universal harmony. Justinian ends by pointing to another soul in this sphere, that of ROMEO DI VILLENEUVE. Romeo was, according to legend, a poor wanderer who became attached to the court of Raymond Berenger IV, the last count of Provence. Although Romeo was influential in arranging the marriages of Raymond’s four daughters, he was accused of embezzlement by envious courtiers, upon which he left the court and returned to his wandering lifestyle, begging door to door. Justinian asserts that Romeo’s fame would be even greater if the world knew what was in his heart as he wandered in exile. Justinian completes his discourse with a hymn as Canto 7 opens. The hymn (Dante’s own invention) is a prayer to the “God of hosts,” suggesting the military connection of the souls in this sphere,

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those who sought honor. The emperor’s radiant soul begins spinning in a dance to his own melody and is joined by the other souls in this sphere, who then spin off into space like shooting stars. The pilgrim now turns to Beatrice, yearning to ask her a question but hesitating out of reverence for her. But since Beatrice can read his mind, she senses that he is perplexed about Justinian’s comment that “just vengeance” (i.e., the Crucifixion) was “justly avenged” (i.e., the destruction of Jerusalem). Adam’s sin damned all of his descendants, Beatrice begins, until God, prompted by love, took on human nature. Thus the Crucifixion of Christ’s human nature, as payment for Adam’s original sin, was completely just, a “just vengeance.” However the torment of Christ’s divine nature was completely unjust, a sacrilege for which the Jews were culpable and deserved the “just vengeance” of Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 C.E. Beatrice now reads another question in the pilgrim’s mind: Why did God not choose another way to redeem the human race? This sparks a more complex response from Beatrice. Human nature, she says, resembles God because it was directly created by him (and therefore is free and eternal). But Adam’s sin marred human nature’s likeness to God. That nature could only be restored if amends were made for the sin. There were two conceivable ways to repair the rift: Either God could simply forgive mankind through his infinite mercy, or mankind could atone for the sin by satisfying God’s justice. The latter was impossible—fallen man was too deformed by sin to be able to atone. Thus God chose to satisfy justice and mercy himself in a single act. In mercy he took on human flesh, thus restoring human nature to its original likeness to God, and in that perfected human nature, satisfied God’s justice on the cross. Finally Beatrice recognizes another question her words have raised in the pilgrim’s mind. If the basic elements of earth, air, fire, and water were directly created by God, why do the things of the Earth, composed of these elements, decay? God directly created the elements, Beatrice explains, but they are given their form as material objects (or plants or animals) through secondary causes—things that

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are themselves created—and therefore these forms made from the elements will ultimately perish. The human soul is the direct creation of God (as she asserted in Canto 4), and hence eternal. For that matter human flesh is God’s direct creation as well (as the creation of Adam and Eve reveals), and, in light of this, Beatrice assures Dante that he may be assured of the resurrection of the body at the end of time. Canto 8 begins with a discussion of the name of the planet Venus, and the mistaken notions of the ancients who named the planet after the goddess of love whom they worshiped. The pilgrim had been unaware of his ascent but now realizes that he and Beatrice have entered the sphere of Venus because Beatrice’s enhanced beauty indicates that she has moved another step closer to the Empyrean. Immediately the travelers are surrounded by the dancing lights of the souls in this sphere, who sing “Hosanna” and perform here a dance they began in the Empyrean. These are the amorous, those who in life were devoted to carnal love before turning to caritas (spiritual love). The spokesman for this group tells the pilgrim that all of the souls want the pilgrim to share their joy and tells him that they all move with the same will as those angelic intelligences to whom he addressed his CANZONE beginning “O you whose intellect spins Heaven’s third sphere” (the second canzone in Dante’s CONVIVIO). The pilgrim asks the speaker his identity. He replies that he had known Dante on Earth, and that he would have given Dante more cause to love him for his generosity had he not died young. This is the Angevin prince CHARLES MARTEL, whom Dante had befriended but who had died suddenly in 1295 at the age of 24. He was heir to Provence and to Naples and had already been made king of Hungary before he died. He mentions that he would also have been king of Sicily had his grandfather, Charles I of Anjou, not forfeited the love of the Sicilian people and incited the rebellion of 1282, known as the Sicilian Vespers. From this cautionary example Martel predicts that his brother, ROBERT OF ANJOU KING OF NAPLES, will come to disaster if he does not curb his stinginess—a trait so different from the generosity of their father (Charles II of Anjou, king of Naples).

Martel’s comments prompt the pilgrim to ask how good seed can produce bad fruit—how sons can grow to be so inferior to their fathers. Martel answers that the heavens influence the talents of individuals in various ways, in accordance with the will of God. Thus sons will not necessarily have the same talents as their fathers. Because an ordered society requires various talents of its members in order to function smoothly, people are born with diverse aptitudes. These various gifts, distributed without regard to lineage, should work together to form a harmonious commonwealth. Individuals go astray when they are forced by circumstances into roles they were not meant to fill, as when a natural soldier is pushed into the priesthood. The poet opens Canto 9 with a direct address to Clemence (either the wife or the daughter of Charles Martel). He speaks of the wrong that will be done to Martel’s son when his brother Robert usurps the throne of Naples from him. Dante also claims that Charles revealed some things about his descendants that Dante cannot talk about, but he can only hint that those wrongs will be avenged. Now some other figures appear from among the dancing radiant souls. The first of these is CUNIZZA DA ROMANO. A notorious woman in her day, Cunizza was the sister of the infamous tyrant Ezzelino, whom she refers to as a “flaming torch” (l. 29) and whom Dante had placed among the violent in circle seven of Hell. Cunizza had been the lover of the troubadour SORDELLO (portrayed in Cantos 6–8 of the Purgatorio), for whom she had left her first husband. She is known to have had three more husbands and at least two other lovers. But she is here, presumably, because she turned from those carnal loves to true caritas late in her life. Remarkably she indicates, “I myself forgive in me / what caused my fate, it grieves me not at all” (ll. 34–35). Revealing that she can read the future in the mirrors of God’s justice—the angelic Thrones who move the sphere of Saturn—she goes on to prophesy a series of disasters for those who live in her native land, the March of Treviso, which will be torn by partisan strife. Prior to her prophecy Cunizza has generously introduced another figure from among the amorous souls whose fame, she says, should last for five centuries: This is the soul of FOLQUET DE MAR-

Paradiso SEILLE—a troubadour poet like her lover, Sordello, but one who, later in life, abandoned his carnal life and turned to the love of God. He became a Cistercian monk and eventually bishop of Toulouse. After reiterating Cunizza’s attitude that the souls here do not repent, but rather “smile instead” (l. 102), Folquet reads the pilgrim’s mind and introduces the radiant soul beside him. This is the soul of Rahab, the whore of Jericho who aided the Israelite spies in their escape from the city of Jericho before Joshua’s victory there (Joshua 2). Folquet says that Rahab was the first to ascend to this sphere, presumably having been released from Limbo on the occasion of Christ’s Harrowing of Hell. Now the Holy Land that Joshua won is being neglected by the current pope (BONIFACE VIII), who rather than recovering Jerusalem from the Muslims cares only for canon law. Folquet ends with a prophecy that Rome will soon be free of the simoniac practices of this papacy. In the course of his comments Folquet mentions that this third sphere is the last one into which the shadow of the Earth extends, implying that these amorous souls are the last in Heaven who will be touched by earthly concerns.

Commentary The address to the reader with which Dante begins his second canto is one of the most remarkable of such addresses in the entire Comedy. In it he actually warns unprepared readers to go no further, because unless they have devoted their lives to study, they will find it very difficult to follow him in these deep seas. The metaphor of his composition as a boat repeats the image he used at the beginning of the Purgatorio, but in this case his boat is a large ship whose sails must be filled by Minerva, goddess of wisdom. Maintaining the ship imagery, Dante alludes to the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and asserts that nothing the Argonauts saw on their journey into the unknown was nearly as amazing as the things Dante is about to reveal as he makes his unprecedented journey. Dante is, as he implies, the first poet to endeavor to describe Heaven itself in detail. The structure of Heaven presented in the Paradiso is based on the Ptolemaic system as conceived in Dante’s day. There are thus nine spheres revolv-

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ing around the stationary Earth. Moving outward from the Earth these are the spheres containing the seven planets—the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—encircled by the sphere of the fixed stars and finally the Primum Mobile (First Mover), beyond which is the Empyrean Heaven, the eternal abode of God. Thus as Beatrice and the pilgrim Dante shoot upward at incomprehensible speed, their first stop will be the sphere of the Moon. Although the Moon seems at first to be a luminous cloud into which he passes, the pilgrim comes to realize that it is in fact a solid orb with a smooth polished surface, and (assuming that he does indeed possess his body at this point) he is unable to comprehend how two solid objects can occupy the same space—a logical and physical impossibility on Earth. But one of the chief themes of this canto is the insufficiency of human reason. Virgil, symbol of human reason, could guide the pilgrim only to the Earthly Paradise. There the Divine Wisdom of Beatrice took over, and here the pilgrim is finding that rational assumptions about the world are insufficient for Heaven, where divine revelation must explain the mysteries of faith. The rather trivial point of the pilgrim’s absorption into the solid Moon is used here to recall the mystery of the dual nature of Christ—as light can enter water, as Dante can enter the Moon, so God can enter human flesh, and only the mystery of faith can explain why. It may seem odd to modern readers that the pilgrim Dante, whisked into the heavens by the love of God, should stop on the way to wonder why there are dark spots on the Moon, or more important why Beatrice should take up 97 lines to respond to him, including time spent refuting the pilgrim’s own wrong answer. But in fact Dante’s question leads to the consideration of the structure of the universe itself, and the distribution of God’s love throughout his creation, and so is perfectly relevant at the beginning of this third canticle. However, Beatrice’s discourse is quite complex and dense—so much so that one wonders whether Dante places it here to illustrate his warning to unprepared readers at the beginning of the canto: This is the sort of thing that readers of the Paradiso

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will have to consider—if the reader cannot follow it, he needs to turn back. Once again the discussion points out the limits of human understanding and the need for divine revelation. Dante suggests his own theory concerning the spots on the Moon, repeating the suggestion (based on the Muslim philosopher Avicenna) that he had made in Convivio 2.13.9 that the Moon varied in density and that this variety led to differences in the way the surface reflected light. Beatrice disproves this notion in two ways. If Dante’s explanation were true, she says, then either the Moon’s lighter and denser areas extended through the entire body of the Moon, or the surface of the Moon was layered so that the darker areas were deeper down and thus farther from Earth. If the first possibility were true, Beatrice says, then during an eclipse of the Sun, sunlight would show through the thinner, translucent areas of the Moon. Nor can the second option be true, Beatrice says, and illustrates with an experiment: Set three mirrors at different distances from you in a room, and let them all reflect the same light behind you. The farthest mirror, she says, may appear smaller but will reflect the light at the same intensity as the other two. From a modern scientific perspective, of course, particularly dealing with astronomical distances, Beatrice’s conclusions about the experiment are quite wrong, but for Dante and his contemporaries they held weight. Beatrice begins her own explanation of the Moon’s markings (the explanation of Divine Wisdom, which she represents) by comparing the varying brightness of the Moon with the varying brightness of the fixed stars: The cause of one must be the cause of the other, she implies. The stars are known to affect Earth, and Beatrice argues that if the variations in the stars were caused by disparities in density, then the only differences in the effects of one star or another on Earth would be differences of degree rather than of kind. All stars would have the same sort of effect, but some would have a stronger effect than others. But since the influences of stars do in fact differ in kind, then the dissimilarities in brightness must be the result of different powers, not densities. They are qualitative, not quantitative, differences.

The creative power of God (which is one and indivisible) is transmitted to the rest of the created universe, including human beings as well as the cosmic spheres, through the variety of the stars. The planets, Beatrice explains, are moved and powered by angel intelligences, as the human body is by the soul, and God’s light and the stars’ influence that shines on them are reflected back according to the nature and virtue of the object and its intelligence—according to the capacity of the angel intelligence to receive and reflect God’s creative power. A number of intelligences must inhabit the sphere of the Moon, and their varying worth affects the Moon’s varying brightness. Beatrice’s explanation, if not satisfying from a scientific perspective, is quite appropriate spiritually and allegorically. It underlines God’s power and love that knits all of creation together. More important for the remainder of the Paradiso, it sets the stage for the hierarchical arrangement of the inhabitants of Heaven. All souls Dante meets here are saved—why should some be closer to God than others? Beatrice’s discourse implies the answer: Individuals receive grace according to their own capacity. Some have a greater capacity than others, but all are happy because all are filled with blessing. The pale faces that appear before the pilgrim as Canto 3 begins seem to him to be dim reflections, but he recognizes that he has made what he calls the opposite of the error made by Narcissus: The mythological Narcissus mistook his reflection in a pond to be a real person, while the pilgrim Dante mistakes these real people to be reflections. His mistake results from his reliance on his own physical senses—something that his discussion with Beatrice about the markings on the Moon has just demonstrated is an error here in Heaven, where spiritual awareness is far more important. The Moon, long a symbol of inconstancy in that it is apparently the only changing object in the heavens, seems the appropriate abode for the souls who, on Earth, were inconstant in their vows pledged to God. Dante speaks with two nuns, both of whom were compelled to leave their cloistered lives to make political marriages against their will. Yet clearly this sphere contains, as well, the souls of

Paradiso monks or priests who may have similarly forsaken their vows, in addition to secular Christians who failed to fulfill promises made to God. In the hierarchy of the blessed these souls stand lowest, and it may seem logical for Dante to ask whether any souls in this sphere ever feel discontent with their placement here. It is possible that Dante may have in mind the shades he has recently seen in Limbo in the first circle of Hell, all of whom wish to be on the other side of Hell’s gate. But there are essentially two answers to Dante’s question. First, as Piccarda explains, each individual soul in Paradise experiences heavenly bliss according to his or her own capacity to receive it, and therefore all are content. Second, as the pilgrim will find out in the next canto, all souls in Paradise dwell in the Empyrean Heaven and partake of the divine vision. They also appear, however, in the heavenly sphere that most closely represents the quality of their earthly lives. The two women who appear here have much in common. Piccarda Donati, a kinswoman of Dante’s wife, Gemma, was the sister of Dante’s good friend Forese and his bitter political enemy, the Black leader Corso. Forese had told Dante in Canto 24 of the Purgatorio that Piccarda was already in Paradise. She had become a member of the Franciscan sisters of Saint Clare early in life, but in about 1288 her brother, Corso, broke into the sisters’ Florentine convent with an armed company and abducted Piccarda, forcing her to marry a Florentine gentleman named Rossellino della Tosa, with whom Corso desired a political alliance. Early commentators claimed that Piccarda soon grew sick and died as a result of her forced marriage. The other woman is the empress Constance, last of the line of Norman kings who conquered Sicily in the 11th century. Legend said that Constance was a nun but was forced to marry Henry VI (son of Frederick Barbarossa and second of the powerful Hohenstaufen emperors) and later gave birth to the Emperor Frederick II. Piccarda claims that Constance always had the veil in her heart—suggesting that she still lived the holy life in spite of her forced secularization. Modern historians now doubt that Constance was ever a nun and believe that Dante was simply following a popular current

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legend about the empress. But it is interesting to note that when Piccarda Donati took the veil, she adopted the name Constance. As the third canto ends, the pilgrim watches the faces of Constance and Piccarda fade away, making the face of Beatrice seem that much brighter by comparison. It is also true, however, that the closer Beatrice approaches to the Empyrean Heaven, the brighter her face becomes, as it reflects the light of God’s love in her. Canto 4 deals exclusively with the two doubts raised by the pilgrim Dante after he listens to Piccarda’s comments. Beatrice first considers the doubt raised by Plato’s Timaeus. Dante did not know the Timaeus directly but either through a Latin translation by Chalcidius or indirectly through comments by SAINT AUGUSTINE or ALBERTUS MAGNUS. Thus Dante’s understanding of the Timaeus goes beyond what Plato actually said. All souls, as Dante understands it, preexisted in the stars before being placed into human bodies, and each soul returned to its same individual star upon the body’s death. The fact that the souls of the inconstant reside in the Moon makes it appear to Dante as if Plato’s doctrine is true. This doctrine, attractive to many in the early church, was specifically declared heretical at the Council of Constantinople in 540 C.E., when it was decided that each soul was specially created by God at the birth of the individual. But the real shortcoming of Plato’s doctrine is its denial of free will—if the soul is predestined to return to the same star whence it sprang, then human choice on Earth becomes meaningless. Thus Plato’s doctrine is heretical, or poisonous as Beatrice calls it. The truth, as Beatrice explains to Dante, is that all souls in Heaven inhabit the Empyrean and experience heavenly bliss according to their own capacities. They appear in the different spheres as a symbol of their varied capacities to enjoy the infinity of God’s reward, but they enjoy his grace equally and all have their home in him. In this Dante follows the interpretation of SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS of the words of Christ in John 14.2: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” Aquinas asserts that these dwelling places or “mansions” are metaphorical degrees of bliss: “Now the heavenly kingdom is compared to a city,” he writes. “Therefore we

184 Paradiso should distinguish various mansions there according to the various degrees of beatitude” (ST 3, suppl., q. 93, a. 2). Furthermore this capacity for bliss differs according to the degree of caritas each soul is capable of: “The more one will be united to God the happier will one be. Now the measure of charity is the measure of one’s union with God. Therefore the diversity of beatitude will be according to the difference of charity” (ST 3, suppl., q. 93, a. 3). We can probably assume that this is the case in Dante as well—the farther the pilgrim ascends, the greater the charity of the souls he addresses. Dante’s other question—the justice of holding Piccarda and Constance responsible for their broken vows when they were in fact forced to leave the convent—is treated by Beatrice as a question of will. The steadfast human will cannot be coerced, according to Beatrice. It has the power to resist any force. Piccarda and Constance could have returned to the cloister. She provides two examples of the steadfast human will—following the pattern set in the Purgatorio, one example is Christian, the other classical. The first is Saint Lawrence, martyred under Valerian in 258 C.E. A deacon of Rome entrusted by Pope Sixtus II with the church’s treasury, Lawrence was arrested by a Roman prefect and ordered to hand over the treasury to him. Lawrence agreed and proceeded to send the prefect the sick and poor citizens to whom he had provided charity and told the prefect that the church had no greater treasure than these. Unamused, the authorities tortured Lawrence, finally roasting him on a grill (during which torment the saint is said to have asked to be turned over so that he could be roasted evenly on all sides). Beatrice’s other example is the ancient Roman hero Mucius (Gaius Mucius Scaevola). During a siege of Rome by the Etruscan king Porsenna of Clusium Mucius vowed to infiltrate the Etruscan army and kill the king. He failed in his assassination attempt, killing the king’s secretary by mistake. When he was captured and facing execution by burning, Mucius deliberately put his right hand into a sacrificial fire and held it there without showing any pain. Impressed by his will, Porsenna let him go, and Mucius earned his nickname Scaevola (i.e., “Lefty”).

In the rest of the canto Beatrice explains her remarks in relation to Piccarda’s comment that Constance always kept the veil in her heart. To explain, Beatrice employs the standard Scholastic distinction between the absolute will and the conditioned will. The absolute will—like that maintained by Lawrence or Mucius—always and steadfastly wills the good. The conditioned will, however, reacts to fear or violence and may choose what it perceives as a lesser evil in order to avoid a greater. Once again Thomas Aquinas (citing the authority of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics) asserts that actions performed through fear are “voluntary rather than involuntary” actions (ST 1.2, q. 6, a. 6). That Dante has Aristotle in mind here as well is clear from the example that Beatrice uses to illustrate the conditioned will: It is the example of Alcmaeon, the same one used when this question arises in Book 3 of the Nicomachean Ethics. Alcmaeon (alluded to previously in Purgatorio 12) was the son of the seer Amphiaraus, one of the Seven against Thebes. Amphiaraus had foreseen his own death at the siege of Thebes and refused to join the expedition. But his wife, Eriphyle, bribed by Polynices, persuaded him to go. Amphiaraus made his son swear to avenge him on Eriphyle if he died at Thebes, and Alcmaeon ultimately chooses to kill his mother in order to carry out his father’s command. Thus Alcmaeon’s (clearly misguided) act is one of conditioned will, as he consents to commit one wrong in order to avoid another that he sees as worse. This, Beatrice insists, is the will that prevented Constance from rejoining the convent. Dante’s near-swoon at the end of Canto 4 is also worth noting. It recalls his swoon after speaking with Francesca in Canto 5 of the Inferno (actually the fourth after the general introductory canto). The swoon here is intended to recall that earlier incident and encourage readers to see the parallels between Piccarda and Francesca: Each woman is the first contemporary figure the pilgrim meets in their respective canticles. Both women discourse upon the power of love. Francesca, who speaks of “Love, that excuses no one loved from loving” (Inferno 5, l. 103), presents amorous love as irresistibly drawing her to desire Paolo, as it compelled him to desire her. This kindled desire is in their case an

Paradiso irresistibly destructive force. Piccarda, on the other hand, describes “the virtue of our heavenly love,” which makes the souls in the sphere of the Moon “want no more / than what we have” (Paradiso 3, ll. 70–72). Divine love is not about destructive desire but about peace, contentment, and joy. As the opening of Canto 5 makes clear, Beatrice will increase in beauty and radiance as she continues to ascend toward God. Her radiance, like that of the other souls in Paradise, is the outward manifestation of her joy, the bliss that accompanies perfect love. This love and joy come, she tells the pilgrim, from her perfected vision (l. 5), that is, the understanding or intellect that shapes her will to love, directing it toward the Highest Good. And she can see that Dante himself, though mortal, already has the eternal light in his own mind. This explains the burning intellectual curiosity that inspires Dante to ask so many questions here in the heavenly realms, as he seeks that perfect understanding or vision that will lead to perfect love. It also explains the eagerness of other heavenly souls, shining with the eagerness of their joy, to help him. Beatrice’s comments regarding the possibility of one’s vows’ being commuted echo those expressed by Thomas Aquinas: And if it be decided absolutely that a particular vow is not to be observed, this is called a “dispensation” from that vow; but if some other obligation be imposed in lieu of that which was to have been observed, the vow is said to be “commuted.” Hence it is less to commute a vow than to dispense from a vow: both, however, are in the power of the Church. (ST 2.2, q. 88, a. 10)

Beatrice warns too that vows must be taken seriously, not entered into rashly without serious intent. The vow must be for a good purpose. Again Aquinas seems to be the source of Dante’s views. In the same article concerning vows Aquinas says Certain things are good, whatever be their result; such are acts of virtue, and these can be, absolutely speaking, the matter of a vow: some are evil, whatever their result may be; as those things which are sins in themselves, and these can nowise be the matter of a vow: while some, considered in themselves, are good, and as such

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may be the matter of a vow, yet they may have an evil result, in which case the vow must not be kept. (ST 2.2, q. 88, a. 2)

Aquinas adds that this was the case with Jephthah. Beatrice also cites the example of Jephthah: A Gileadite and a judge of Israel, Jephthah led his army against the Ammonites, vowing that if he were victorious in the battle, he would sacrifice the first living thing to greet him when he returned. Unfortunately, it was his own daughter who rushed to welcome him home (Judges 11.30–34). The classical example from Beatrice is another involving the rash sacrifice of a daughter. It was well known that prior to the departure of the Greek fleet for Troy Agamemnon was forced to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to the goddess Diana in order to calm the winds. Dante seems to have been following a version of the legend in which Agamemnon had promised the goddess the most beautiful thing born in his kingdom during the year. The most beautiful is, of course, his daughter, but he postpones making the sacrifice until some years later, when Diana will not allow the Greek fleet to sail until she is appeased. Canto 5 ends as Dante and Beatrice enter the sphere of Mercury, in which he will find the souls of the ambitious, or the seekers of honor. They appear hidden in their own radiance. The happiness of the soul who offers to answer the pilgrim’s questions— an act that reflects his own perfect charity—is discernible in the intensity of his own brightness, which hides him from the pilgrim’s eyes. Canto 6 is a densely allusive Canto on Roman history, or, more accurately, the progress of the eagle, symbol and standard of Rome, as delineated by the emperor Justinian I—“Caesar” on Earth, he says, but merely “Justinian” here in Heaven, where such distinctions are meaningless (l. 10). He became Caesar, he says, some 200 years after the Emperor Constantine established the new imperial capital at Constantinople in 330 C.E. This move was “against the course of heaven” (l. 2) because, first, it was a move from west to east, the reverse of the movement of the heavens. But second, it is implied, the move was contrary to the will of Heaven, since, as Justinian makes clear later, God’s

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plan was that the eagle should move west to Rome, as it did under Aeneas (“that warrior who wed Lavinia” [l. 3]), and Rome was to be the seat of his church. Justinian is chosen as the spokesperson to deliver this political vision perhaps because of his pivotal position in Roman history. His reconquest of Italy and reestablishment of an imperial presence at Ravenna would suggest a return of the eagle to its rightful home, according to the will of Heaven. His codification of Roman law had already been cited, in Canto 6 of the Purgatorio, as the bridle meant to tame the wild horse of Italy. A connection is thus established between Canto 6 of the Paradiso and Canto 6 of the Purgatorio: In the earlier canticle the poet delivered a 76-line diatribe against contemporary Italy because of its internecine warfare caused by the absence of a true emperor; here in the Paradiso Justinian delivers a canto-long history of God’s providential hand in the empire that now is spinning out of control. A full accounting of all Justinian’s allusions in this canto requires a course in Roman history. For our purposes it may be prudent to focus on four major points of the story that Justinian takes care to emphasize. Justinian begins his survey at the time of Aeneas, traveling to Italy to wed Lavinia and to unite the Trojan and Latin lines. But Justinian does not begin with a reference to Aeneas himself but rather to Pallas, son of Aeneas’s ally Evander, who was killed in Aeneas’s war with Turnus. As Ricardo Quinones points out, the heroes of Rome are the equivalent of Christian martyrs, since they are instruments of the divine plan for Roman/Christian history (164–165). After a list of such heroes Justinian arrives at the second major point of his history, the time of JULIUS CAESAR. Caesar’s career receives a disproportionate amount of attention in Justinian’s summary because it was precisely at that point that “Heaven willed / to bring the world to its own harmony” (ll. 55–56). Justinian describes Caesar’s wars in Gaul (ll. 58–60); his crossing of the Rubicon, thus initiating the civil war (ll. 61–63); his defeat of Pompey at Pharsalia and Pompey’s subsequent death at the hands of Ptolemy (ll. 64–66); his stripping Egypt from Ptolemy and giving it to Cleopatra (l. 69); and his subsequent defeats of Pompey’s ally

Juba and Pompey’s sons in Spain (ll. 70–72). These events are significant in Justinian’s history because they establish the empire and Caesar’s authority over it. They set the stage for the third major point of the eagle’s progress, at which the most important events of this long history are about to occur. These events begin under Augustus, who follows Caesar as Rome’s “succeeding chief” (l. 73). Augustus, having defeated Caesar’s murderers (BRUTUS and CASSIUS, now punished in Hell in the mouth of Satan [Inferno 34]) as well as his own rival Antony, begins a time of worldwide peace—a time at which the gates of the temple of Janus in the Roman forum are locked (l. 80). These gates were always left open during times of war as a sign that the god was out with Rome’s troops. Augustus had them closed in 27 B.C.E. (for only the third time in Roman history) as a sign of universal peace. For Dante this peace was the necessary preparation for Christ’s coming into the world. He was born under Augustus and crucified under the third Caesar, Tiberius. In this God’s will was accomplished, because the original sin of Adam was expiated through the sacrifice of Christ under Roman law. Although this “vengeance” for that sin was divinely ordained, it was still necessary to avenge Christ’s death (ll. 92–93), and therefore under Titus the Roman armies again became God’s instrument by destroying Jerusalem, thus punishing the Jews whom Dante and his contemporaries saw as culpable in the Crucifixion of Christ. The final significant point of Justinian’s story is the reign of Charlemagne (ll. 94–96). As king of the Franks Charlemagne had invaded Italy in 773 after the Lombard king Desiderus had threatened Rome and the pope himself. Although Charlemagne was not crowned Holy Roman Emperor until 800, Dante sees this action as symbolic of the necessary sacred bond between the Empire and the church. Charlemagne, bearing the standard of the eagle, is Dante’s ideal of the emperor ordained by God to hold secular power in a universal Christian commonwealth. Having finished his historical survey, Justinian contrasts Charlemagne with the “new Charles” (l. 106)—that is, Charles II of Anjou, who was king of Naples and Sicily and leader of the Guelph party

Paradiso in 1300 (the fictional date of the Comedy). Justinian proceeds to condemn contemporary Guelphs as well as Ghibellines, both of whom are acting contrary to God’s will. The Guelphs, supporting the pope and Charles as the tool of the pope and using the French fleur-de-lis as their standard, are trying to “tear / the banner [of the eagle] down” (ll. 106–107)—to bring down the Empire itself, the instrument of God’s providence. The Ghibellines (supporters of the emperor), who display the eagle standard as their own, are no better than the Guelphs because they have abandoned the concept of justice so basic to the Empire—as Justinian, codifier of Roman law, knows better than anyone. All of this Justinian has offered in answer to the pilgrim’s simple question about his identity. As for why Justinian and his fellow souls are assigned to this sphere, the former emperor answers that these souls all performed their deeds at least in part out of a desire for earthly fame. Since that desire impeded somewhat their concentration on the love of God, their capacity for bliss in Paradise is less than that of some of the other souls in the heavenly realms. Like the breakers of vows in the sphere of the Moon, however, these souls are completely happy with their position, and their contentment contributes to the overall harmony of the heavenly spheres. In Canto 3 Piccarda Donati had introduced one of the souls sharing her reward, the empress Constance. In this sphere the emperor Justinian reverses this act and introduces the commoner Romeo di Villeneuve. Romeo, as Dante presents him, is a humble pilgrim who rises to great heights in the court of Raymond Berenger IV of Provence, only to be falsely accused of misuse of funds by jealous members of the court. Romeo recalls another figure similarly unjustly maligned—PIER DELLE VIGNE in the Wood of Suicides in Inferno 13. Had Romeo despaired of his unjust treatment and ended his life, he would not have the reward he has here received. Almost certainly Dante also intends readers to see a parallel between Romeo and himself. Falsely accused of graft and condemned by the Florentine government to perpetual exile, Dante, as Romeo, ends his life as a pilgrim soul, “begging, door to door, his bread” (l. 141). Such are the consequences for those whose principles, like Romeo’s and Dante’s,

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are in line with the high ideals Justinian extols in the first part of the canto. Dante himself has the choice to react to his treatment as Pier delle Vigne had, or as Romeo had. It is clear by the time he writes this Canto which path he has chosen. Justinian sings a song to the God of hosts and then glows with what Dante characterizes as a twofold brightness that might be interpreted as suggesting both earthly and heavenly glory. Finally he and his fellow spirits engage in a dance before they fly off. This will be the first of a series of dances that the spirits will perform in God’s harmonious Heaven. Justinian has said something that bothers the pilgrim, however, and although he is too overawed by Beatrice to pose the question to her, she is again able to read his mind: How, the pilgrim wonders, could Titus’s destruction of Jerusalem have been just punishment when the Crucifixion was itself an act of justice? Her answer to this allows Beatrice to provide an account of sacred history that parallels Justinian’s previous canto on secular history. At the root of Beatrice’s explanation is the principle of Christ’s dual nature. Human beings were created sinless and immortal and with free will. In all of these ways the human soul manifests a likeness to God. But when through his own free will Adam disobeyed God, he forfeited this likeness and human nature was effectively marred. In order to atone for that original sin, Christ took on human form and with it human nature, and his Crucifixion was a just act because in adopting human nature he took upon himself the guilt of humankind, which was thereby purged when he died on the cross. However, even though their Crucifixion of Christ was a part of God’s just plan, the Jews’ motives in crucifying Christ were evil ones, and because he was also divine, the Crucifixion was a sacrilege. In that sense the Jews were culpable and subject to punishment, which was meted out justly when Titus destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Having answered the pilgrim’s initial question, Beatrice now goes on to anticipate his next difficulty: Why did God choose this particular means of expiating human sins, rather than another? Beatrice’s answer to this is essentially the argument

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presented by SAINT ANSELM OF CANTERBURY in his famous tract Cur deus homo (“Why God Became Man”). According to this argument there were two ways that human nature might be restored after original sin: Either God could, through his mercy, grant humankind a free pardon, or humans could satisfy God’s justice by making amends for their sin. But the recompense for the sin must be a penalty equivalent to the sin itself, and human beings were incapable of humbling themselves to the extent possible to atone for the outrageous sin of pride involved in Adam’s rebellion—his attempt to make himself like God, according to the serpent’s promise in Genesis 3.4–5. God ultimately chose the way of justice and mercy. He took on human nature and was crucified in order to save humankind through his own infinite mercy. In doing so, he through his act of humility countered Adam’s pride, atoning for the sin through an act of sincere love (which every atonement must be). Beatrice’s discourse has raised another question in the pilgrim’s mind: If things created directly by God are immortal (as the original human beings were), then why are all things made up of the four elements not immortal, since those elements were created by God? To answer this, Beatrice makes a distinction between direct creation and secondary creation. Specific earthly objects are formed by the basic elements and the influence of the stars. Plants and animals are among these things, and their vegetative and animal souls are formed in them by the influence of the stars. Therefore these are not immortal but corruptible, like the rest of worldly creations, except for human beings, whose souls are created directly by God and are therefore immortal. All of this, Beatrice asserts in an aside, is proof of the resurrection of the body. Because God created the bodies of Adam and Eve directly, the body will rise again on the last day. It is not clear how all human bodies will rise merely because Adam and Eve’s were made incorruptible, particularly since, as STATIUS has discussed in Canto 25 of the Purgatorio, the human body originates as the mingling of blood and therefore seems to be a secondary creation. But STATIUS’s further assertion—that the infused intellectual soul becomes the form that shapes the body (as it later shapes the aerial body of the shades

in the afterlife)—implies that Dante may see the body, too, as God’s direct individual creation. Since human nature has been restored to its original perfection by Christ, there should be nothing to hinder the body from rising to eternal life. As Canto 8 opens, Dante alludes to the pagan belief that under the influence of the planet Venus men and women could be driven mad with passionate love. Such beliefs, he goes on to say, inspired pagans to worship the planets as gods. The truth, as Dante has consistently made clear, is that the planets can only predispose people to act in a certain way. The free human will can overcome any such inclinations, as MARCO LOMBARDO has explained in Canto 16 of the Purgatorio. Thus human beings are responsible for the way they act upon the influence of Venus. If they turn that influence toward virtuous love, they will find a place in this heavenly sphere. The souls who approach Dante here are the amorous whose love has been turned to caritas. Like the other souls in Paradise, they have arrived here from the Empyrean, their true home, where they had been dancing among the Seraphim. The soul who acts as their spokesman asserts in lovers’ language that each of the souls is ready to give the pilgrim pleasure, to let him have the fullest joy (ll. 32–33). Here of course this involves answering his questions, thus increasing his understanding and therefore his love. Such a love shared, as Virgil had stressed in Purgatorio 15 (ll. 55–58), will only increase the love of all. The spokesman explains that the souls here circle in perfect harmony with the angelic intelligences, the Principalities (ll. 33–35), who move this sphere of Venus, and quotes back to the pilgrim Dante his own canzone addressed to those very angels—the first canzone of the Convivio beginning, “O you whose intellect spins Heaven’s third sphere.” The speaker, as he identifies himself, is Charles Martel, the young heir to the kingdoms of Provence (the “left bank” of l. 58), Naples (the “region of Ausonia’s [i.e., Italy’s] horn” of l. 61), and Hungary (the “land the Danube bathes” in l. 65). Charles Martel, eldest son of Charles II of Anjou and Mary of Hungary, had already been crowned king of Hungary when he visited Flor-

Paradiso ence in 1294 and was warmly entertained by the Florentines. This canto makes it clear that he had met Dante on that occasion and that the two were more than just passing acquaintances, particularly since he speaks of Dante’s once loving him greatly (l. 55). Charles Martel apparently was familiar with the poem he quotes in these lines, a poem that may have been popular during his stay in the city. He also seems to have given Dante some pledge of future patronage, since he tells the pilgrim that Dante would have witnessed “more than the first leaves of my love for you” (l. 57) if Charles had not died so soon. Cholera claimed Charles Martel in 1295 at the age of 24, but Dante uses him here as the image of an ideal ruler whose actions would have been motivated by love. His allusions to others in his family make his own virtues stand out by contrast: Sicily would still have been ruled by his descendants had not French misrule alienated the population and provoked the Sicilians to rebel in 1282, throwing off the rule of his grandfather, Charles I of Anjou. Charles Martel goes on to prophesy that his brother Robert, who would inherit the kingdom of Naples from their father Charles II in 1309, will face similar rebellion if he does not curb his own greed and that of his Catalan advisers (Robert had spent time as a hostage in Spain and had made a number of Catalan friends, whom he took to Naples with him when he inherited the throne). Robert’s stingy heart, Charles adds, had sprung from one more generous. In this Charles must not be alluding to their father, Charles II, whom HUGH CAPET mentions in Purgatorio 20 (ll. 79–81) as being particularly avaricious, but perhaps to Charles I of Anjou, their grandfather, who appears in Canto 8 of the Purgatorio among the negligent princes (ll. 112–114). In that canto a common theme among the rulers is the inadequacy of their offspring to the task of ruling. Sordello comments that “not often does the sap of virtue rise / to all the branches” (Purgatorio 7, ll. 121–122) and adds that the gift of virtue is up to God, “and we can only beg that He bestow it” (l. 123). Here in the corresponding canto of the Paradiso the question arises again, as Dante asks Charles Martel why noble fathers do not necessarily sire worthy sons.

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Charles Martel’s answer has much in common with Virgil’s explanation of the workings of Fortune in the corresponding seventh canto of the Inferno. There Virgil had claimed that God worked through the turnings of Fortune’s wheel to ensure that wealth continued to circulate among different families and nations rather than accumulating in one place. Through this divine economic policy the overall society benefited. Similarly Charles Martel asserts here that virtuous qualities cannot all be concentrated in a single family. God ensures that virtues are not simply passed down through the active male principle discussed by Statius in Purgatorio 25, but that individuals are subject to the influence of the stars (harking back to the beginning of the canto). As individuals create the variety of God’s Heaven with their differing capacities for love mentioned by Justinian (Canto 6, ll. 124–126), individuals with a variety of talents fulfill God’s plan for Earth. Since God created man to be a social being, and since society requires a wide assortment of different talents in order to function well, God (through nature in the form of stellar influence) creates individuals whose talents are diverse enough to benefit society, without regard to lineage. Thus Charles gives the example of Jacob and Esau, biblical twins who even in the womb displayed significant differences in character. In the familiar pattern of coupling a biblical example with a classical one, Charles also cites the figure of Romulus, who founded Rome but whose father was of such low birth that he could be completely forgotten, encouraging later generations to say that Romulus had been sired by the god Mars. As he ends his discourse, Charles Martel seems to allude to two of his own brothers when he argues that people should build on what nature has granted them, rather than moving into positions for which they are not suited. “Those men bent to wear the sword you twist / into the priesthood” (ll. 145–146), he says—possibly alluding to his brother, Lodovico, who became bishop of Toulouse—and he adds “you make a king / out of a man whose calling was to preach” (ll. 146–147)—probably referring to his brother Robert, king of Naples, who had composed a number of elaborate sermons.

190 Paradiso Dante begins Canto 9 with a direct address to “Clemence.” Scholars are divided as to whether this is intended to refer to Clemence of Hapsburg, Charles Martel’s widow and the daughter of the Emperor Rupert I, or to Clemence of Anjou, the daughter of Charles Martel and after 1315 the wife of King Louis X of France. Since Charles’s wife died in 1295, in the same epidemic that claimed her husband’s life, it would seem that Dante would be more likely to address the living Clemence— though his reference to “your Charles” in the first line would be an unusual phrase to use with the man’s daughter. Dante prophesies trouble for Charles’s descendants. He refers no doubt to plots against Charles’s and Clemence’s son Charles Robert, who became king of Hungary in 1308 upon the death of Otto of Bavaria, but was blocked from the throne of Naples by the machinations of his uncle, Robert the Wise, and POPE CLEMENT V. Dante’s prediction that those responsible would soon pay may allude to the deaths of Robert’s brother and nephew in the Battle of Montecatini in 1315. The pilgrim converses with two more souls in this sphere as the canto continues, and these encounters follow the pattern established by Charles Martel: The individuals speak of their own lives on Earth and then end with prophetic condemnations of contemporary political figures. The first soul he meets is Cunizza da Romano, one of the most notorious women of 13th-century Italy. The sister of the infamous tyrant Ezzelino III of Romano (whom Dante shows immersed to his eyebrows in the river of boiling blood in Canto 12 of the Inferno), Cunizza had made a political marriage in 1222 to Count Riccardo di San Bonifazio of Verona. In 1226 she fled Verona with her lover, the troubadour Sordello (whom we have seen in Cantos 6 through 9 of the Purgatorio). She went on to marry two more husbands and take at least one more lover. By 1260 when her brothers being dead, Cunizza settled in Florence, where she seems to have devoted the remainder of her life to acts of charity. In 1265 in a document composed in the house of CAVALCANTE DEI CAVALCANTI, she freed the slaves who had been owned by her father and her brothers. She wrote her will in 1279 (perhaps ill-advisedly leaving her estate

to her kinsmen Alessandro and Napoleone degli Alberti, the counts of Mangone whom Dante places in the last circle of Hell in Inferno 32), and she probably died shortly thereafter. Cunizza’s presence here may be somewhat surprising, but Dante apparently wants to present her as a woman naturally inclined to carnal love, who later redirected that inclination to the love of God. Cunizza makes the rather startling comment that she feels no remorse for her earthly sins but only feels thankful to God. Drinking from Lethe in the Earthly Paradise has not wiped away all memory of her sin, but it seems that all regrets have been washed away. Penance has already been performed, and God has forgiven Cunizza and taken her into Heaven. Gratitude is all she can feel. Like Justinian and Piccarda Donati before her, she is enjoying heavenly bliss to her own full capacity. Cunizza ends with a lengthy prophecy concerning her home territory of the March of Treviso in northeastern Italy (between Venice and the Alps). She documents a series of punishments that will befall the citizens of the March for their iniquities, beginning with the decisive defeat of the Paduan Guelphs by Dante’s patron CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA in 1314. The Paduans’ failure to pay allegiance to the empire led to their bloody defeat at the River Bacchiglione near Vincenza in 1314. The second punishment she predicts is the assassination of Riccardo da Cammino, lord of Treviso, in 1312. Riccardo was murdered in his palace by a halfwitted servant while playing chess with Alterniero degli Azzoni. It is thought that Alterniero had planned the murder to avenge himself on Cammino for seducing his wife. The final prophecy concerns Alessandro Novello of Treviso, bishop of Feltre and a Guelph partisan. In 1314 he received a group of Ghibelline refugees from Ferrara whose failed coup attempt against Pino della Tosa forced them to ask for Alessandro’s protection. But at Pino’s request the bishop surrendered the refugees, who were all publicly executed in July. Alessandro’s deed gave him such infamy that he ultimately retired to a monastery, where he died in 1320. Cunizza reads these judgments, she says, in the minds of the Thrones, the angels of God’s judgment who move the seventh sphere, the sphere of Saturn.

Paradiso The second half of the canto is devoted to the other soul waiting to address the pilgrim—it is the troubadour poet Folquet de Marseille. Known, as was Cunizza, for his amorous affairs in youth, Folquet decided to enter a Cistercian monastery in about 1195, convincing his wife to retire to a convent at the same time with their two sons. Folquet became abbot of Torronet monastery in 1201 and bishop of Toulouse in 1205. Thus Folquet, as is Cunizza, is a figure who transcended his early amorous life to spend his later life in caritas. And as Cunizza, he tells the pilgrim in lines 103–105 that he does not repent but credits the loving influence of God, working through the spheres, with drawing him back to God. Folquet points out one more soul to the pilgrim—that of Rahab, the whore of Jericho who hid the Israelite spies who were sent into her city, thus enabling Joshua to conquer the city, the chief Israelite victory in their conquest of the Holy Land. Rahab went on to become one of the ancestors of Christ and according to Folquet was the first inhabitant of this sphere, having been rescued from Limbo during Christ’s Harrowing of Hell. But her chief function here is to give Folquet the opportunity to condemn Pope Boniface VIII: Folquet, who had taken a significant role in the Albigensian Crusade against the Catharist heretics of southern France in 1208–09, denounces the pope for ignoring demands for a new crusade. With the fall of Acre in 1291 Christians lost their last foothold in the Holy Land that Rahab had helped conquer originally. Boniface is interested only in canon law, Folquet declares, rather than the Scriptures or the church fathers. In this Dante is reiterating a charge he had made in a letter written in 1314, where he asserted that the Italian cardinals cared nothing for the church fathers but read only the decretals (collections of church law), which according to Dante dealt only with ways to obtain benefices and increase revenues. In the final lines Folquet issues a prophecy that the sacred Vatican (the place where Saint Peter is said to have been martyred) will soon be free of this “adultery”—if the church is the allegorical bride of Christ, then the pope’s lust for worldly wealth is a form of adultery. The imagery seems appropriate in this sphere of Venus. But just

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what Folquet’s prophecy alludes to is unclear. It may refer to Boniface’s impending humiliation and death. It may look forward to the coming of Henry VII or another imperial champion. It may even refer to Clement V’s removal of the papal court to Avignon, since that would cleanse the Vatican of the sin. One final important point in Canto 9 involves Folquet’s comment that this is the “sphere where the shadow of your earth / comes to an end” (ll. 118–119). According to Ptolemy and the Muslim astronomer Alfraganus, the cosmic shadow cast by the Earth forms a cone whose point extends to the third sphere. Allegorically this suggests that the souls in the sphere of Venus will be the last in Paradise still influenced by any attachment to mundane things.

CIRCLES OF SOULS—THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES (CANTOS 10–22) Synopsis As Canto 10 opens, Dante addresses the readers, calling on them to look up at the spheres and marvel at their perfect order, reflecting and embodying the perfection of their creator. He praises the way the circle of the ecliptic intersects the circle of the equator at precisely the correct angle to create the seasons. He invites his readers, metaphorically, to remain at the table to receive more intellectual nourishment as he moves on. The pilgrim suddenly finds himself in the sphere of the Sun, once again unaware of having risen to that height. Here Dante, protesting that the beauty of this realm is inexpressible, sees a family of souls whose radiance outshines the Sun itself. When Beatrice advises him to thank God for the grace that has taken him to this sphere, the pilgrim focuses his love so thoroughly on God that, for the first time, he remarks that “Beatrice, eclipsed, had left my mind” (l. 60). Singing a hymn whose beauty is unknown on Earth, the bright lights of this realm form a dancing circle around the pilgrim and his guide. When the lights pause in their dance, one of them addresses the pilgrim, saying that the love that has allowed Dante to climb to this height impels the spirits to quench the thirst for knowledge that is the pilgrim’s unexpressed wish.

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Indeed what the pilgrim wishes to know are the identities of the souls that encircle him. These are 12 doctors of the church—influential theologians known for the wisdom and learning expressed in their writing. The speaker identifies himself as Saint Thomas Aquinas, the most influential of 13th-century Scholastic philosophers. To his right is his own teacher, the German Dominican Albertus Magnus, famous for his commentaries on Aristotle and his scientific treatises. Beside him is the soul of Gratian, the Benedictine monk who in the mid-12th century published the Decretum, the first interpretation of the entire body of canon law. Next is Peter Lombard, who taught theology at the University of Paris and wrote the chief textbook for the study of theology, the Sententiarum libri quatuor, a compilation of “sentences” or sayings of the church fathers. Beside him is King Solomon, believed to be the author of the biblical wisdom books of Proverbs and Wisdom. Next is DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, a first-century Athenian mistakenly thought to be the author of the fifth-century treatise on angels called The Celestial Hierarchy, among other texts. The soul beside Dionysius is never named; most commentators believe him to be the fifth-century Spanish priest Paulus Orosius, whose Seven Books of History against the Pagans was written specifically to counter charges that civilization had deteriorated since the advent of Christianity. This work served as an inspiration and a source for Saint Augustine’s magnum opus, The City of God. To the right of Orosius is ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS, sixth-century author of the widely influential Consolation of Philosophy. By him is the soul of the Spanish bishop Isidore of Seville, the early seventh-century author of the encyclopedic Etymologiae. Isidore is followed by the Venerable Bede, the English monk and author of the eighth-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Beside the English Bede is the Scottish Richard of Saint Victor, an Augustinian monk and mystical theologian who was author of the 12th-century treatise De contemplatione. The final soul in the ring of lights belongs to SIGER OF BRABANT, a contemporary of Aquinas and fellow philosophy instructor at the University of Paris. Siger, a follower of the Muslim philoso-

pher Averroës, was the great adversary of Aquinas, and many of Siger’s arguments were condemned as heretical. Yet he dances beside Aquinas in this ring of souls. With the introduction of this last soul the ring of spirits begins to turn again, and the lights resume their music unknown on Earth. Dante compares their movement and song to a clock tower that calls the faithful to the celebration of matins, the service that anticipates the rising of the sun. Dante begins Canto 11 with a four-tercet aside in which he muses upon all the striving involved in worldly pursuits and the waste of time it all seems from his vantage point in Heaven with his glorious Beatrice. The circle of souls ends its dance, and Aquinas speaks again. Reading the pilgrim’s thoughts, the saint sees that two comments in his previous discourse have puzzled the pilgrim: The first is his comment that SAINT DOMINIC led his followers on a road “where all may fatten if they do not stray” (Canto 10, l. 96). The second is the remark that after Solomon “there never arose a second with such a vision” (Canto 10, l. 114). He will clarify the second point in Canto 13; here Aquinas discusses the first. According to Thomas Aquinas Divine Providence sent two princes to help guide the church, the Bride of Christ. One (Saint Francis) was remarkable for his love, like the angelic Seraphim. The other (Saint Dominic) excelled in wisdom, as did the Cherubim. Aquinas says he will speak of only one, since to praise one of these great mendicant founders is to praise both, and he (a Dominican) chooses to relate the life of Saint Francis. He narrates the biography as if it were the love story of Francis and the personified Lady Poverty. While still a youth in Assisi Francis angered his father by marrying this lady, whom no one else would have. She had been without a lover since the death of her first spouse (Christ) 1,100 years before. Aquinas relates how Francis’s first converts embraced poverty to follow him, how the popes Innocent III and Honorius III gave their blessings to the new order, how Francis preached unsuccessfully before the sultan of Egypt, and how he returned to Italy, where he received the stigmata—the wounds of

Paradiso    193 Christ. Two years later he died in the lap of his beloved Poverty, commending her to his disciples and requesting that they love her faithfully. Aquinas now returns to the pilgrim’s question, implying the unity of the mendicant orders by suggesting that as Francis’s fellow, Dominic must be equally admirable. But the rule laid down by Dominic is no longer followed by the friars of Dante’s time. Returning to the metaphor of the Dominicans as sheep, Aquinas says that many are greedy for a richer food than Dominic allowed and wander off. Only a few remain close to their shepherd— that is, adhere to Dominic’s rule—but these are so few that it would take very little cloth to produce their cowls. When Aquinas finishes his speech the 12 wise souls begin to circle again around the pilgrim and Beatrice. Almost immediately a second circle forms around the first, made up of 12 more scholars. Both wheels now begin to move in perfect harmony, a sight Dante compares to a double rainbow. From within the second ring of souls another spirit speaks. This time it is Saint Bonaventure, the leading Franciscan of the later 13th century. As the Dominican Aquinas had delivered a stirring eulogy of Bonaventure’s master Francis, so Bonaventure, echoing Aquinas’s assertion that God had sent the church two guides, takes the opportunity to eulogize Saint Thomas’s master, Dominic. In a narrative that follows the pattern Aquinas used, Bonaventure speaks of Dominic’s life as a war story, with the saint as Christ’s great champion. Bonaventure describes Dominic’s birth in the Castilian village of Caleruega, claiming that Dominic’s intellect was so great that in the womb he caused his mother to have prophetic dreams. Bonaventure goes on to relate Dominic’s marriage to faith at his baptism, his godmother’s dreams of his glorious future, and the spirit from Heaven who decreed that his name would declare that he belonged to the Lord. Bonaventure traces Dominic’s career, describing his request to the pope for the right to fight heresy (specifically the heresy of the Albigensians in southern France) and his subsequent career as God’s soldier against them. Having finished his story, Bonaventure proceeds to attack the degeneracy of his own Franciscan

order (as Aquinas had with the Dominicans). He refers to Matthew of Acquasparta (who as general of the order in 1287 relaxed the Franciscan rule, inviting subsequent abuses) and to Ubertino of Casal (leader of the Spiritualist Franciscans, who wanted a more radically literal reading of the rule), lamenting the way they had divided the order. Bonaventure now names himself, declaring that when he was general of the order, his concerns were not with temporal things. He then names the other souls in his circle. The first pair are two of Francis’s early followers, Illuminato (who accompanied Francis on the Fifth Crusade) and Augustine of Assisi, said to have died the same day and hour as Francis himself. Next is the learned theologian and mystic Hugh of Saint Victor (two of whose students—Richard of Saint Victor and Peter Lombard—are in the first circle). Petrus Comestor

The Sun—Glorified Souls, from Canto 12 of the Paradiso, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

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(an early chancellor of the University of Paris) and Peter of Spain (who became Pope John XXI) are next in the circle (Peter is the only “modern” pope whom Dante puts in Heaven), followed by Nathan, the Old Testament prophet who chastised King David for his affair with Bathsheba. Next Bonaventure names Saint John Chrysostom, the fourth-century patriarch of Constantinople, and Saint Anselm, 11th-century archbishop of Canterbury, often considered the first of the Scholastics (Beatrice had used Anselm’s arguments in Canto 7 when she explained the necessity for Christ’s sacrifice). Anselm is followed by Donatus, fourth-century Roman grammarian, and Rabanus, the learned ninth-century archbishop of Mainz. Finally just to the left of Bonaventure himself is JOACHIM OF FIORE, the radical Cistercian whose prophecy of an “Age of the Spirit” was adopted by the Spiritualist Franciscans and opposed by Bonaventure. Bonaventure ends the canto saying that it was Aquinas’s speech that prompted him to recount the story of Dominic, God’s own knight. As Canto 13 opens, Dante addresses his readers, asking that they visualize the brightest constellations of the heavens revolving in synchronized movements in order to have some notion of what the pilgrim witnessed as the spirits danced around him. After singing a hymn in praise of the Trinity, the 24 circling radiances fall silent, and the spirit of Thomas Aquinas speaks again. Aquinas now purposes to answer the second question that he had read in the pilgrim’s mind back in Canto 11 (l. 26)—the question of how it can be said of King Solomon that “there never arose a second with such vision” (Canto 10, ll. 114). Aquinas sees that the pilgrim believes that it was to Adam and Christ himself that God imparted the greatest portion of wisdom. Aquinas begins his lengthy explanation by making use of the Neoplatonic idea of the great chain of being: The living light of God flows into creation, is reflected through the nine spheres, and is infused into earthly beings and objects, each of which embodies the light to its own capacity. In this Aquinas echoes Beatrice’s discourse on the Moon spots in Canto 2, as well as Charles Martel’s discussion of individual differences in Canto 8. But Aquinas goes on to say that God’s

original light is diminished as it moves through the spheres, and anything created indirectly by nature cannot be as perfect as that which proceeds directly from God. Of humans only Adam and Christ were created with no intermediary, and therefore the pilgrim is correct in assuming that these two were without peer. Solomon, says Thomas, was the wisest of kings, not of all men. Solomon had not asked for a grasp of syllogistic logic or esoteric metaphysical knowledge of the sort speculated on by many of Aquinas’s fellow Scholastics (to “know whether necesse / with a conditioned premise yields necesse,” or to be able to “count angels here,” for example, in ll. 98–99). Solomon had asked God for the understanding to govern his people (1 Kings 3.9), and that is what he received. Aquinas’s distinction between the wisest king and wisest man leads him to a more general warning that one must be careful to make clear distinctions before making judgments. Such hasty conclusions can lead into grave errors, and Aquinas lists several classical philosophers and early Christian heretics who made such mistakes—mistakes that, because of their pride, they refused to admit. In his final words Aquinas goes further, cautioning against judging other people as damned or saved. We cannot presume to know the mind of God or see what God sees; thus it may well be that the person we see as a thief will in fact be saved by God, and the one we see performing acts of charity will in fact be damned. In Canto 14 once Aquinas has ended his discourse, Beatrice once again reads the pilgrim’s thoughts and expresses his question before it has even formed in his mind: Will these souls remain as bright as they are now for all eternity, even after they are reunited with their resurrected bodies? And if so, how will their fleshly eyes be able to cope with the intensity of the light? The rings of souls dance with renewed delight and thrice sing a hymn to the Trinity as they anticipate satisfying the pilgrim’s thirst for knowledge. This time it is Solomon, the brightest of the spirits, who speaks. Their brilliance will indeed last eternally, he says. The degree of their brightness reflects the degree of their love, and their love

Paradiso    195 is directly proportional to their vision or knowledge. The extent of their vision, finally, depends upon the grace bestowed on them. When they are reunited with their bodies, they will in fact be more perfect beings. The resurrection will increase their portion of grace, which will enhance their vision, and that in turn will magnify their love. As that happens, they will grow even brighter. Indeed the bodies that lay beneath the ground will surpass the effulgence of these souls as the inner glow of a coal surpasses the white ash of its outer flame. And the eyes and other organs of the resurrected body will be perfected as well, becoming strong enough to bear any brightness. At that both rings of souls cry “Amen,” so eager are they to be reunited with their bodies. Now Dante is aware of a third ring of souls, encircling the other two and increasing their brilliance, overcoming his sight. He looks on Beatrice, and her smile enables him to raise his eyes once more, until he realizes he has been transported again to the fifth sphere, the glowing red sphere of Mars. The pilgrim offers a silent prayer of thanks, and when he has finished he witnesses two great beams of light forming a cross in the sky. In his memory Dante says he sees the image of Christ on that cross but cannot find the words to describe the sight. He sees countless bright lights within the beams that form the cross, like dust specks moving in a sunbeam. The souls are all joined in singing a hymn of praise in which the pilgrim recognizes only the words arise and conquer. Overwhelmed, the pilgrim believes he has never felt such bliss—but then remembers that he has not yet looked into the eyes of Beatrice, who must be even more beautiful now that they have ascended to a higher sphere. As Canto 15 opens, the blessed souls in the cross end their song and eagerly await the opportunity to help the pilgrim—the virtuous love they share, Dante says, always ends in generosity, just as the misdirected love of transient things always ends in evil (as Virgil had outlined in Canto 17 of the Purgatorio). Suddenly Dante sees a single soul move like a shooting star from the right arm of the cross down to its foot. Dante compares this soul’s eagerness to address him with that of Anchises when he met his son, Aeneas, in Hades in Virgil’s epic,

The Cross, from Canto 14 of the Paradiso, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

and, echoing Anchises, the spirit greets Dante as sanguis meus or “blood of mine” (Aeneid 6.835). The spirit continues in Latin to exclaim, “O grace of God. To whom, as to thee, was heaven’s gate ever twice opened?” (ll. 28–30). In words beyond human understanding the spirit continues, finally concluding with thanks to the Trinity for showing such great favor to his descendant. For this soul is that of Cacciaguida, Dante’s great-great-grandfather. He says he knows the pilgrim understands that souls in Heaven can read his thoughts by seeing them mirrored in the mind of God, and therefore the pilgrim does not speak his desires. But out of love for his offspring Cacciaguida asks to hear the pilgrim’s own voice ask what he wants to know. Encouraged by Beatrice’s smile, the pilgrim asks the spirit’s name. Cacciaguida introduces himself as the father of Dante’s great-grandfather, Alighiero, after whom the family took its

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name. He mentions in passing that Alighiero has been on the first terrace of Purgatory for more than a century and is in need of the pilgrim’s prayers. Cacciaguida goes on to describe the Florence of his own day, the early 12th century. It was a much simpler place, where the citizens dressed in leather and did not build grandiose, showy homes. Women were not married too young, and dowries were not too large. Wives did not paint their faces, and their husbands did not leave them to go off trading in France. Dante’s contemporaries—such as the reputedly immoral woman Cianghella and the corrupt justice Lapo Salterello—would have astounded the people of ancient Florence as much as the noble Romans Cincinnatus and Cornelia would amaze the citizens of Dante’s modern city. Into that simpler and more virtuous city Cacciaguida was born and was christened at Dante’s beloved Baptistry of San Giovanni. He married a woman of the Alighieri clan and later followed Emperor Conrad in the Second Crusade. It was Conrad who knighted him on the battlefield, Cacciaguida says. His death in the crusade was counted a martyrdom, and so Cacciaguida arose directly to this fifth sphere. As his speech ends, he chastises contemporary popes for failing to mount a new crusade to recapture the Holy Land. As Canto 16 opens, Dante says he now can understand why people on earth take pride in their lineage, since even in Heaven itself he was moved to feel such pride. But he adds that a noble lineage is only valuable if members of the bloodline continue to act in a noble manner. Out of respect the pilgrim addresses his ancestor with the Italian formal “you” (voi) and begs him to give a more specific account of his family and of the Florence of his day. The radiance of Cacciaguida burns brighter with joy as he begins to speak. His birth, he says, occurred when the planet Mars had returned 580 times to the constellation Leo after the moment of Christ’s incarnation (i.e., about 1091). His family house, he says, was located in the section of Florence called the Porto San Piero. Cacciaguida refuses to boast of his own forebears. The Florence of his day was about one-fifth the size of Dante’s city, he says. This was before the purity of the original

Florentine population was polluted, as Cacciaguida puts it, by refugees from surrounding towns like Campi, Certaldo, Fighine, Galluzzo, and Trespiano. In particular he cites Baldo d’Aguglione (guilty of fraud in public office) and Fazio de’ Morubaldini of Signa (who worked with Pope Clement V to oppose Emperor Henry VII) as members of these immigrant families who have corrupted the city. The clash between the papacy and the emperor was responsible, Cacciaguida implies, for the immigration of the Cerchi family from Acone (l. 65) and the Buondelmonti from Valdigreve (l. 66)— two leading families in recent Florentine political controversies. Cacciaguida blames this “mixed blood” for the decay of many great cities of the past and says it promises to be Florence’s ruin as well. A number of the old noble families (the Ughi, the Bostichi, the Ravignani) are already extinct by Dante’s day. Other great families are in decline, and many have been corrupted by their own pride. Finally Cacciaguida laments particularly the entry to Florence of the Buondelmonti clan, recalling the tragedy that ensued when Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti broke his engagement to a daughter of the Amidei clan, resulting in his murder and the bloody Guelph-Ghibelline warfare in the city. This kind of civil war was unheard of in Cacciaguida’s day. After Cacciaguida’s speech the pilgrim is eager to ask another question and is encouraged to do so by Beatrice. Although she and Cacciaguida already know his desire, she urges the pilgrim to express it, knowing that he will need to return to communicate with the world. At this the pilgrim recalls to Cacciaguida all of the dark prophecies he has heard about his own future from the various souls in Hell and Purgatory (CIACCO, FARINATA, BRUNETTO LATINI, VANNI FUCCI, CORRADO MALASPINA, ODERISI OF GUBBIO). He wishes to hear Cacciaguida, who can see directly into the mind of God, clarify these prophecies, so that he can return to his life forewarned. At this Cacciaguida begins to relate the details of Dante’s banishment, this time in clear words rather than the enigmatic language of prophecy. First he assures the pilgrim that the foreknowledge he attains from God in no way predestines events

Paradiso to happen as they do. Dante will be forced to flee from Florence, Cacciaguida says, through the machinations of Boniface VIII, the simoniac pope. The pilgrim will be forced to leave behind what he loves the most and will learn what exile is like, but he will be most disturbed by the company of those around him—the other white Guelphs from whom Dante broke in 1304, becoming what Cacciaguida calls “a party of your own” (l. 69). Cacciaguida tells Dante that his first patron will be the great Lombard whose arms display an eagle upon a ladder. This is thought to be Bartolommeo della Scala of Verona. With Bartolommeo Dante will meet the young man destined for “great renown” (l. 78), that is, Bartolommeo’s brother, Can Grande, who will be generous and valiant, but whose deeds the pilgrim is warned not to reveal yet to the world (since Can Grande, at the fictional date of the Comedy, was only nine years old). Cacciaguida ends by admonishing the pilgrim not to envy his Florentine neighbors, since his fame will far outlive their infamy. The pilgrim, grateful that Cacciaguida has warned him of the future, still expresses his fear that if he writes the things he has learned on his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven in his poetry, he will offend powerful people. Yet if he fails to write these truths, he worries that he will not achieve fame. Cacciaguida, glowing more brightly than ever, agrees that some readers— those whose deeds have been shameful—will dislike what Dante has to say. This should not deter him, however, from telling the whole truth. While his words may seem offensive at first, ultimately they will benefit humankind and earn him honor. It is for this reason, Cacciaguida tells him, that the pilgrim has chiefly met only famous persons in his journey through the afterlife, because readers can be moved more readily by the examples of illustrious men and women. Canto 18 opens with Cacciaguida contemplating his own words and the pilgrim pondering the joy as well as the pain that await him in the future. Beatrice breaks into the pilgrim’s thoughts to comfort him, reminding him that God will ultimately assuage the wrongs done to him. Looking at her, the pilgrim sees eternal joy and love in her face,

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and his heart feels no other longing. Finally Beatrice directs the pilgrim to listen again to his ancestor, noting that Paradise is not only in her eyes. Cacciaguida now proceeds to point out to the pilgrim all of the most renowned warriors of God included among the souls making up the cross, and as he mentions them, each one flashes like lightning within the arms of the cross. The biblical figures of Joshua and JUDAS MACCABEUS are named first as the most prominent figures. Then Cacciaguida points out the Emperor Charlemagne and his nephew, Roland, and Count William of Orange and his friend, the converted Muslim giant Renouard, all four of whom were heroic figures of the Old French epics. Cacciaguida rounds out his list with two more recent historical crusaders—GODFREY DE BOUILLON, who led the First Crusade (1096), and the Norman warrior ROBERT GUISCARD, who captured southern Italy from the Saracens in the late 11th century. Now Cacciaguida returns to his position in the right arm of the cross, and the spirits all resume their heavenly song. When the pilgrim looks back at Beatrice, he sees that she has grown even more beautiful and thereby understands that the two of them have soared again into the next sphere. The silvery light of Jupiter replaces the red glow of Mars, and here the glowing lights of myriad souls begin to form brilliant letters, one by one. They form themselves into a D, then an I, then an L, until they have succeeded in spelling out the words Diligite iustitiam qui judicatis terram (“Love justice, you who judge the earth”)—the opening verse of the Vulgate book of the Wisdom of Solomon—for this is the sphere of the Just Rulers. When the spirits have formed the final M in brilliant gold against the silver backdrop of Jupiter, other bright souls begin to descend to the M, all singing a hymn of praise. The additional souls first reshape the M into the form of a lily (the symbol of Florence and of the French monarchy) and then, finally, into the shape of a great eagle (the symbol of the empire). The sight of this symbol of divine justice inspires Dante to utter a new invective against the corrupt papacy, and the clergy “who buy and sell within the temple” (l. 122), who, by implication, are like the

198    Paradiso moneychangers whom Jesus drove from the sanctuary in Matthew 21.12–13. The poet addresses the souls of this sphere, asking them to pray for those on earth misled by the simoniac priests, and then, in a bold apostrophe addressed to the reigning pope at the time he was writing (John XXII), Dante condemns the use of excommunication as a means of obtaining church revenue and depicts the pope answering that he recognizes John the Baptist (whose image appeared on the gold florins that he loves), but not Peter or Paul. The souls of this sphere shine like rubies as they form the imperial eagle, and as Canto 19 opens, the pilgrim sees the beak of the eagle move and speak with one voice for the countless souls comprising it. The virtue of their justice has taken them to this sphere, the eagle says, and left a reputation for integrity on earth that people are content to praise but not to follow.

The Eagle, from Canto 19 of the Paradiso, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

Addressing the eagle, the pilgrim begs for the answer to a question that has bothered him for some time. Reading his mind, the eagle does not acknowledge the question but begins by alluding to God’s creation of the universe and the inability of any of his creatures to understand the divine intellect. Thus the truth of God’s justice is concealed from the pilgrim, who would ask where the justice is in damning eternally the virtuous man who has never heard of Christ or been baptized. Indignantly the eagle asks the pilgrim who he thinks he is, trying to pass judgment on matters he does not understand. Chastising thick-headed men in general, the eagle proclaims that the divine will is perfectly good, and only what accords with it can be called just. Now the eagle takes flight and soars above the pilgrim, singing a lofty hymn incomprehensible to the pilgrim’s ears. Returning to its original position, it explains that the judgment of God is as far beyond man’s knowledge as the eagle’s hymn is beyond the pilgrim’s understanding. Souls enter this realm only if they had faith in Christ—either before or after his Crucifixion—the eagle says. But the bird goes on to insist that there are some who call the name of Christ who will not be saved on Judgment Day. In particular the eagle condemns the unjust rulers of several European nations, including Albert of Austria, Philip the Fair of France, the English and Scottish kings, Ferdinand IV of Spain, Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, Charles II of Naples, Frederick II of Sicily, Haakon V of Norway, and Andrew III of Hungary. Navarre may be happy if it escapes French rule, the eagle says, pointing to the recent sorrows of two Cyprian cities—Nocosia and Famagosta—who suffer under the rule of the Frenchman Henry II of Lusignan. When the great eagle stops speaking, all of the individual lights that make up its form begin to sing in harmony the words of a heavenly hymn. When they have finished, the eagle speaks once again in a single voice. It tells the pilgrim to focus on its eye, for the souls making up that part of its anatomy are the worthiest in this sphere. The soul forming the pupil of its eye, the eagle reveals, is King David, whose bliss corresponds to

Paradiso    199 the value of the psalms he composed. Five more glorious souls make up the eagle’s eyebrow. The first of these, closest to the eagle’s beak, is the Roman emperor Trajan (who had been represented as an example of humility on the terrace of pride in Purgatory, Canto 10). Beside Trajan is the soul of the Old Testament king Hezekiah, who showed such pure repentance on his deathbed that God granted him 15 more years to live (2 Kings 20.1–11). The soul at the midpoint of the eyebrow is the emperor Constantine, who moved the imperial seat to Constantinople and, according to tradition, left Rome under the authority of the pope. While the eagle emphasizes Constantine’s “good intentions,” it asserts that those intentions “bore the worst of fruits” (l. 57), since that “Donation of Constantine” has resulted in what Dante saw as the usurpation of secular power by the popes, whose concerns should have been spiritual. The next figure is the 12th-century King William II of Sicily, known as “the Good,” whose just rule is contrasted with that of the current occupants of the thrones of Naples and Sicily—Charles II of Anjou and Frederick III of Aragon. Finally the eagle points out the last radiant soul of its eyebrow—that of the Trojan prince Ripheus. Naming Ripheus as one who was killed during the Greek siege of the city, Virgil called Ripheus the most just of all the Trojans (Aeneid 2.426–427). The frustrated pilgrim (who has just asked the eagle about the fate of virtuous pagans in Canto 19) cannot contain himself when he sees the two pagans—Trajan and Ripheus—and bursts out with “How can this be?” (l. 82). The eagle explains that God (in his mercy) actually wills his judgment to be assailed by human love and hope so that it may be overturned. Trajan, the eagle explains, was in Limbo until the fervent hope and prayer of Gregory the Great allowed him to return to life. The revived Trajan lived long enough to recognize the truth of the Christian faith and to be baptized. That, according to the eagle, is why Trajan is here. As for Ripheus the eagle relates that his love of righteousness was so great that 1,000 years before Christ God granted Ripheus a vision of the Christ to come and baptized him with the virtues of faith,

Beatrice, from Canto 21 of the Paradiso, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

hope, and charity. The eagle ends by extolling God’s predestination of elect souls, the list of whom is unknown even to souls in bliss. As the eagle speaks, the souls of Trajan and Ripheus twinkle in harmony. Canto 21 opens with the pilgrim’s eyes fixed once more on Beatrice’s face, but this time she does not smile. Having risen now to the sphere of Saturn, she tells the pilgrim that if she were to smile now her dazzling beauty would consume him like a bolt of lightning. As he looks away from her face into this seventh sphere, he sees a great golden ladder mounting beyond the limits of his vision, and on the ladder countless radiant souls. One soul, perched with the crowd on the ladder’s rung nearest the pilgrim, begins to shine brightly with love, but the pilgrim hesitates to speak to this radiance because Beatrice has not yet given him a sign.

200    Paradiso Having obtained Beatrice’s permission, the pilgrim now respectfully asks the radiant soul why he is the one who has gone to this point on the ladder to speak with the pilgrim and asks as well why he hears no music in this sphere, in contrast with all the others he has visited. The luminous spirit answers that the pilgrim’s ears, like his eyes, are mortal, and thus they could not bear the music of this sphere any more than his eyes could bear Beatrice’s smile here. As for why he has arrived to greet the pilgrim, the spokesman says that it was in order to serve God, who has assigned him this task. Now the pilgrim poses another question that has been troubling him: Why exactly was this soul and no other predestined for this task? The soul, whirling around its inner luminescence, responds to the pilgrim that his love enables him to look directly into the face of God and from it to derive perfect joy. But he adds that even the highest of the Sera-

Saturn, from Canto 21 of the Paradiso, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

phim, who see God most directly, cannot fathom the nature of predestination. The soul then charges the pilgrim, upon his return to earth, to tell the rest of humanity not to presume to probe the question of predestination, when even the most blessed of souls cannot penetrate this mystery. At this the pilgrim deferentially drops his question and only asks humbly the identity of the speaking radiance. The soul names himself as Saint Peter Damian, a well-known ascetic contemplative of the 11th century who rose to the rank of abbot and later cardinal in the church. He contrasts his own deliberately austere life with the gluttony and luxury of contemporary prelates with their large retinues. As he pronounces his judgment on these priests, the other souls in this sphere encircle Peter and raise a tremendous shout like thunder, expressing their approval of his words. Stunned by the loud shout in the previous canto, the pilgrim turns in fear to his guide, who comforts him as a protective mother as Canto 22 opens. Beatrice reassures him that he is in Heaven, and that all actions here are righteous. Had he been able to understand the prayer contained in the shout he has just heard, he would realize that God’s righteous vengeance would soon fall upon the corrupt clergy, and that this would happen in Dante’s own lifetime. Now at Beatrice’s urging the pilgrim turns his attention to the other souls in this sphere, shaped like hundreds of radiant globes. The largest and brightest of these approaches the pilgrim and in answer to his unexpressed question introduces himself as Saint Benedict of Nursia (founder of Western monasticism). Benedict gives a brief account of the founding of his famous monastery on Monte Cassino, which he built on the site of the former temple of Apollo and from which he introduced Christianity to the people of that region of Italy between Naples and Rome. The saint also introduces to the pilgrim the souls of Macarius (probably Saint Macarius the Younger, fourth-century founder of Eastern monasticism) and Romuald (10th-century founder of the Camaldoli, or reformed Benedictines). The pilgrim, emboldened by the love Benedict has shown him, asks the saint whether it would be possible to see his face without the veil of

Paradiso light that hides it. The saint answers that this will become possible when the pilgrim reaches the Empyrean Heaven, the place of perfection where all wishes are fulfilled. Saint Benedict then refers once more to the golden ladder of contemplation, identifying it with the ladder of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28 and declaring that it leads directly to that glorious height. But now, says Benedict, monks have ceased to follow his rule (and thereby climb the contemplative ladder) and are consumed by greed. Benedict sees the same kind of corruption infecting priests and friars (the followers of Peter and Francis in ll. 88–90). Still, however, scripture describes far greater miracles than would be needed to reform God’s church, and Benedict ends on that note of hope. With that Benedict rejoins his company of glowing spirits, and they all are swept up into the heavens. On a sign from Beatrice the pilgrim joins her and the two of them scale the golden ladder more quickly than one pulls his finger from a flame. Now in the sphere of the fixed stars the pilgrim enters into the constellation Gemini—Dante’s birth sign. So that his mind will be completely focused on his approach to the highest blessedness, Beatrice tells the pilgrim to look down to see how far he has come. He sees all seven planets below him and, farthest down, the paltry globe of the Earth, which he calls “the puny threshing-ground that drives / us mad” (ll. 151–152). Smiling at the insignificance of the world, the pilgrim now turns his own eyes away from it to focus on the beauty of Beatrice’s eyes. Commentary As the 10th cantos of the Inferno and Purgatorio do, Canto 10 of the Paradiso marks a new beginning: In the Inferno Dante and Virgil left Upper Hell behind and passed into the city of Dis. In the Purgatorio the pilgrim moved through the gate separating the Ante-Purgatory from Purgatory proper. Here Dante and Beatrice have ascended beyond the shadow of the Earth, beyond the lower spheres wherein the spirits were characterized by some quality that kept them in that earthly shadow, with less capacity to experience heavenly bliss. Now entering the sphere of the Sun Dante is in the presence of the greatest heavenly light.

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Pausing before beginning this new direction, Dante marks the new beginning with a prelude in praise of the perfection of God’s glorious created universe. As with the gate of Hell in Canto 3 of the Inferno, creation is seen as the act of the triune God. In the first tercet the “ineffable first One” (l. 3) is God the Father, who “look[s] upon His Son” (l. 1) (who is obviously Christ) with the “love / which each of them breathes forth eternally” (ll. 1–2)—the love being the Holy Spirit. The reader is invited to look up in line 7 to observe the perfection of that cosmos, demonstrated particularly by the way in which the wheel of the ecliptic (that is, the zodiac) intersects the wheel of the equator at an oblique angle: If the two were parallel, or if the angle of their intersection were more perpendicular, then the seasons would not occur in the manner that they do, and hence there would be no period of rebirth or regeneration. As he enters the sphere of the Sun, the pilgrim notes that the souls of the wise who inhabit this sphere shine brighter than the Sun itself. He then directs his love toward God so fully that, as he says, Beatrice is eclipsed here in the Sun’s sphere. But unlike her reaction in Canto 30 of the Purgatorio, where she chastised the pilgrim harshly for his unfaithfulness to her after her death, Beatrice here approves of the pilgrim’s shifted focus, since this time it is on the Highest Good. This brief scene foreshadows the pilgrim’s ultimate need to move beyond Beatrice when the time comes for him to experience the unity of God directly in the Empyrean Heaven. Here in the heaven of the Sun, however, Beatrice in her allegorical function as Divine Wisdom takes a central role, and the ring that the souls of the wise make around her and Dante is partly intended as a crown or garland for her (ll. 91–93). The circle, of course, also evokes the wheels of the ecliptic and equator at the beginning of the canto, the 12 figures on the circle recalling the signs of the zodiac and the perfect circle they make reflecting the perfection of God’s universe—a perfection that the wisdom of these philosophers has helped to make manifest. It is difficult to make out any particular pattern among the figures named by Aquinas in the circle

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of the wise. They range chronologically from King Solomon of the 10th century B.C.E. through Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, and Siger of Brabant from the late 13th century C.E. They are thus figures demonstrating God’s gift of wisdom throughout salvation history. Nearly all of the figures—Solomon, Dionysius, Boethius, Isidore, Bede, Peter Lombard, Gratian, Richard of Saint Victor—are thinkers whom Aquinas quotes in his Summa theologica, the chief source of Dante’s theological ideas. Siger of Brabant was the chief advocate of Averroism at the University of Paris during Aquinas’s tenure there, and Aquinas does cite Averroës several times in his Summa, so perhaps Siger is here partly as a stand-in for Averroës, whom Dante of necessity had placed in Limbo. Paulus Orosius was a disciple of Augustine—who, notably, is absent from this circle (perhaps so that Dante may introduce him in a more notable position in Canto 32). Perhaps Orosius represents the Augustinian contribution. As for Albert although Aquinas never cites him by name, as his teacher Albert had an influence on his thinking that pervades the Summa theologica. Thus Aquinas introduces a garland of thinkers who influenced his own thought—and whose opinions, it might be said, he introduced to readers of his own text (such as Dante himself). As he often does, Dante seems to present the figures here in pairs, one member of which parallels or complements the other. Saint Thomas (known as the “Angelic Doctor”) and Albert (called the “Universal Doctor”) are largely responsible for making the complete philosophy of Aristotle available in Christendom, Albert through his summaries and commentaries and Aquinas through his Summa, both intended to reconcile Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy. Gratian, originator of the science of canon law, compiled the canons of church councils, decretals of popes, and opinions of the church fathers into what became the basis for the study of canon law—a study that, in the previous canto, Dante had condemned the current church hierarchy for misusing. Gratian is paired with his 12th-century contemporary Peter Lombard, whose Sentences were a compilation of theological opinions of the church fathers on God, creation, salvation, and the sacraments—a compi-

lation that became the basis of Scholastic Inquiry, and did for matters of doctrine what Gratian had done for matters of law. Solomon, an Old Testament figure, is paired with the New Testament figure of Dionysius the Areopagite, mentioned as a convert of Saint Paul in Acts 17.34. Dante will allude to Dionysius in Canto 28, adopting the hierarchy of angels posited in De caelesti hierarchia, the fifth-century treatise attributed to him. As for Boethius his influence has already been seen in the discussion of Fortune in Canto 7 of the Inferno, as well as in discussions of free will versus predestination throughout the Comedy. His pairing with Orosius is curious, but it may be that Dante saw both as bulwarks against heresy—Boethius was an orthodox Christian martyred by the Arian Theodoric the Ostrogoth, while Orosius had attended a council in Palestine in 415 where he condemned Pelagianism. Or it may simply be that Orosius and Boethius lived relatively contemporaneously. Chronological proximity may be the reason for the pairing of Isidore and Bede as well, though the two figures are also remarkable for their breadth of knowledge, Isidore for his encyclopedia of all scientific knowledge of his age, Bede for his variety of writings on history, theology, rhetoric, and science. The final pair of sages, Richard of Saint Victor and Siger of Brabant, might be seen as opposites in their basic contributions. Richard, known as the “great Contemplator,” was the most famous of the 12th-century mystics and a good friend of Saint Bernard, who will be the pilgrim’s final guide in the Empyrean Heaven. His treatise De contemplatione discussed the ecstasy of love that might be attained through the contemplation of God. Siger, on the other hand, was the chief proponent of purely rational Aristotelian philosophy, following the Arab philosopher Averroës, who in following Aristotle to his logical conclusions argued that there was no individual immortality. A contemporary of Aquinas, Siger had been publicly refuted by Aquinas in 1266, then condemned and proclaimed a heretic in 1277. Having fled to Rome to appeal to the pope, Siger was assassinated while in papal custody by a demented cleric. Enemies in life, Siger and Aquinas dance beside one another in the circle of the wise, reconciled by

Paradiso the love of God, which supersedes worldly arguments. Still Siger’s presence here is puzzling. As a heretic he would be expected to be with Farinata in Canto 10 of the Inferno. One might expect at least to find him with Manfred and the excommunicates in Canto 3 of the Purgatorio. Yet here he is, in the Heaven of the Sun with the greatest orthodox theologians. Perhaps Aquinas’s comment that Siger demonstrated “invidiously logical” propositions (l. 138) provides one clue to his salvation: Siger’s logical demonstrations raised envy or even hatred but also inspired Aquinas and others more carefully and rationally to define their own positions; thus as a gadfly Siger did God’s will. Further Dante seems to have identified with Siger as a fellow figure who was forced to flee into exile because of his unpopular stance. In any case Siger was seeking the truth of the universe as God had created it, and here his bliss includes the final knowledge of what he was seeking—including the clear demonstration that he was wrong about the immortality of the soul. Solomon is another figure who might be a surprise to some. Augustine and other theologians had expressed doubts as to whether Solomon was saved. Certainly according to the Scriptures he was led astray into idolatry late in his reign by his many foreign wives (1 Kings 11). Yet Dante places him here and has Aquinas say of him that “there never arose a second with such vision” (l. 114)—a comment that he will qualify later but that justifies Solomon’s presence here. Two other points in Canto 10 are worth commenting on. In line 87 Aquinas addresses the pilgrim as one who, though alive, must have received special grace to ascend this far, from where “none descends except to mount again”—this seems a clear pronouncement that the pilgrim is destined for salvation. As such it reiterates what Beatrice told him in the Earthly Paradise: “You shall be with me—and without end” (Purgatorio 32, l. 101). Second in introducing himself, the Dominican Aquinas takes a moment in this canto briefly to warn his fellow Dominicans (he will warn them at greater length in the following canto). Saint Dominic, he says in line 96, has provided his flock a rule “where all may fatten if they do not stray”— that is, they have sufficient food for the spirit in

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following his rule, but those who wander from it will forfeit that nourishment. Aquinas will go on in Canto 11 to attack at length the present degeneracy of his order. Dante begins Canto 11 with an unusual apostrophe to the human race, using the first three tercets to scorn virtually all worldly endeavors—whether “theft” or the “affairs of state” (l. 7), “priesthood” (l. 5) or “pleasures of the flesh” (l. 8). In the fourth tercet he contrasts these with the pilgrim’s glorious welcome in the sphere of the Sun, beyond the “vanities” of such mundane endeavors (l. 10). The canto’s opening effectively leads into Aquinas’s discussion of the life of Saint Francis, characterized by devotion to poverty and the rejection of any striving for worldly gain. Aquinas, like other blessed souls can see the pilgrim’s thoughts by reading them in the mind of God and therefore knows of Dante’s confusion over what he has said of King Solomon and what he has said about the sheep who “may fatten if they do not stray” (Canto 10, l. 96). In preparing to answer the second question, Aquinas begins by introducing the founders of the two great mendicant orders of the Middle Ages, Saint Francis and Saint Dominic. Demonstrating that in Heaven all souls are in harmony, Aquinas unites the two sometimes rival orders in his discussion. Using the metaphor of the church as the Bride of Christ, Aquinas says that Divine Providence had provided two guides to keep the bride faithful to her Groom. One was Saint Francis, who is chiefly distinguished by his love (which Aquinas indicates is characteristic of the Seraphim, the highest order of angels and the closest to God, purportedly because of their more ardent love), while Dominic is known for his wisdom (characteristic of the Cherubim). The historical Aquinas makes this distinction: Cherubim is interpreted fulness of knowledge, while Seraphim means those who are on fire, or who set on fire. Consequently Cherubim is derived from knowledge; . . . but Seraphim is derived from the heat of charity. (ST 1, q. 63, a. 7)

Because Francis and Dominic worked for the same end—the advancement and purification of the church—Aquinas says that to praise one is to praise

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both and delivers an admiring biography of Saint Francis (the Franciscan Bonaventure will devote a similar eulogy to Saint Dominic in Canto 12). A difficult passage is lines 49–54: Here Aquinas metaphorically calls Francis himself a sun, a beacon of light like the other figures in this sphere, but also one whose coming ushered in a new dawn for the church. Appropriately he is from the city of Ascesi (Dante’s spelling of Assisi), a word that means “I have risen.” But an even more appropriate name for Francis’s birthplace, Aquinas says, would be Orient, the point from which the Sun rises, since his birth was a dawning for the world. Aquinas treats Francis’s devotion to poverty as a love story and dates the marriage of Francis and Poverty from the moment in 1207 when the saint gave up his inheritance in the presence of his father and the bishop of Assisi. None had been inspired to marry Poverty since her last suitor—Christ—had died, despite the example of Amyclas. This rather obscure allusion is to Lucan’s Pharsalia (5.515– 531), where the fisherman Amyclas lies unperturbed on a bed of seaweed when Julius Caesar goes to his door to ask for passage across the Adriatic. Because Amyclas was so poor, he had nothing to fear from Caesar because there was nothing that could be taken from him. Thus his poverty gave him peace of mind. Aquinas mentions that Popes Innocent III and Honorius III both sanctioned the Franciscan order. In fact Innocent had given it provisional verbal approval in 1210 because he considered the rule too strict. Honorius officially approved the Franciscans in 1223, though before the end of the century the original rule was revised. Aquinas also mentions Francis as preaching to the sultan of Egypt. In fact Francis and some of his followers had accompanied the Fifth Crusade in 1219. Once in Egypt risking his life, Francis found his way to the camp of the sultan al-Malik al-Kámil. He was courteously received and tried unsuccessfully to convert the sultan, who listened politely but remained unmoved even by Francis’s offer to walk through the fire to show his faith. Finally Aquinas describes Francis on Mount Alvernia in 1224 receiving the stigmata, the marks that he bore until his death at Porziuncola near Perugia in 1226.

After this long preamble Aquinas finally answers the pilgrim’s question. Having dwelled on the ideal of Franciscan poverty, Aquinas condemns his own Dominican order for their worldliness. The sheep (i.e., friars) could grow spiritually fat by living according to the Dominican rule—but they are lured away by greed for worldly goods and honors and fail to observe their principles strictly. Aquinas chides them for this as the canto closes, just as Dante had chided human beings in general for the same failing in the opening of the canto. Canto 12 is intended to mirror in a very precise fashion the structure and content of Canto 11, just as the second circle of the sapient souls in this canto mirrors the first circle and moves in perfect harmony with it. Saint Bonaventure, the most famous and influential of Franciscan theologians, mirrors Saint Thomas Aquinas, the most learned of Dominican theologians. In fact Bonaventure was the author of a famous biography of Saint Francis that was probably one of Dante’s sources for Thomas’s eulogy of Francis in Canto 11. As the Dominicans such as Aquinas and Albertus Magnus of the inner circle were known for their learning, the Franciscans like Bonaventure—also the author of the mystical Itinerarium mentis in Deum (“Itinerary of the mind to God”)—were known for their love. Thus in these circles understanding (the first circle) precedes love (the second circle), which is its reflection. In this Dante reemphasizes what Beatrice had told the pilgrim in the opening of Canto 5—that her radiance is the manifestation of her love, which becomes more perfect as her understanding increases. This is the opinion of the historical Aquinas: Good is the cause of love, as being its object. But good is not the object of the appetite, except as apprehended. And therefore love demands some apprehension of the good that is loved. . . . Contemplation of spiritual beauty or goodness is the beginning of spiritual love. Accordingly knowledge is the cause of love for the same reason as good is, which can be loved only if known. (ST 1.2, q. 27, a. 2)

Bonaventure’s biography of Dominic parallels Thomas’s life of Francis nearly line for line.

Paradiso As Thomas called Francis’s birthplace the perfect Orient (Canto 11, ll. 51–54) from which rose a new sun, Bonaventure describes Dominic’s birthplace in Spain as the extreme western shore, from which Zephyrus, the west wind, carries spring to all of Europe (as Dominic’s life means a springlike rebirth) (Canto 12, ll. 43–45). As Francis wed Poverty (11, ll. 61–63), so Dominic is seen as wedding himself to the Faith (12, ll. 61–64). Bonaventure’s eulogy describes Dominic’s early life in ways that stress his great intellect—so powerful that from the womb he inspires his mother’s prophetic dream that she would give birth to a dog that was to set the world on fire. His godmother dreams that he is born with a star on his forehead that illuminates the entire world (ll. 64–66). This prophecy, regarding his brilliant intellect, is fulfilled through the study that makes him a “mighty theologian” (l. 85), probably alluding to his 10 years of study at the University of Palencia. Lines 91–96 are difficult: Here Bonaventure asserts that Dominic went to the pope, not to request a profitable church appointment, or the right to pay to the poor only a third or a half of what was due to them and keep the rest for himself (as other petitioners commonly asked), but rather for leave to combat heresy (“the sinful world” of l. 94). With the pope’s blessing, and armed with his will and intellect, Dominic rushed off to attack heresy where it was “toughest” (l. 101)—that is, among the Albigensians of Provence, where he went to preach in 1205. He preached and apparently at times fought against the heretics for a dozen years, ultimately asking for papal permission to found an order of preaching friars, chiefly with the goal of converting the heretics. The order received final papal approval in 1216—though by that time the Albigensian Crusade had spent seven years wiping out the heretics. In the end alluding to both the harmonious circles of the blessed here in the sphere of the Sun and the chariot representing the Church Militant in Purgatorio 29, Bonaventure calls Dominic and Francis the wheels on the chariot of the church (ll. 106–111). Beginning in line 112 Bonaventure once more parallels Aquinas in denouncing the members of his own order for their degeneracy. Bonaven-

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ture chiefly laments the Franciscans’ division over the rule of their order. He mentions Matteo d’Acquasparta, who had relaxed the discipline in 1287 and thereby eased the way for abuses to occur, as well as Ubertino da Casale, leader of the Spiritualist Franciscans, who were so radical in their strict interpretation of the rule that their views were ultimately condemned as heretical. Bonaventure condemns both sides. Finally as Thomas had in Canto 10, Bonaventure introduces himself and his fellow spirits making up the second circle of the wise. Bonaventure names himself first and then proceeds to list his companions in the second ring. As in the first ring Dante has here created certain pairs of figures: Illuminato and Augustine—the two early Franciscans—form the first pair; Hugh of Saint Victor and Peter Comestor were 12th-century contemporaries; Donatus and Rabanus were early Christian scholars; John Chrysostom, who lost his position as patriarch of Constantinople for criticizing the empress Eudoxia, parallels Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, who had to flee England after wrangling with the king, William Rufus, over ecclesiastical jurisdiction. But in addition to the internal pairs within this second ring Dante also uses these figures as mirrors of the souls in the first ring. Aside from Bonaventure’s obvious parallel to Thomas, there are a number of other corresponding pairs. The prophet Nathan, who challenged King David over his affair with Bathsheba and complicity in the death of her husband, Uriah (2 Samuel 12), clearly parallels the first circle’s King Solomon—the product of that adulterous union. The Greek patriarch Saint John Chrysostom is probably intended to parallel the Greek Dionysius the Areopagite from the first ring. Perhaps the mystic Hugh of Saint Victor is intended to parallel his student, the later mystic Richard of Saint Victor, while the eighth-century Bede may parallel the ninth-century Rabanus, both of whom were probably the most learned figures of their times. Donatus, author of the standard grammar textbook in the schools, may parallel Boethius, who authored the standard music textbook. There could also be an intended correspondence between Orosius, famous for his history of the early church,

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and Peter Comestor, whose famous Historia scholastica outlines the salvation history of the Old Testament. Most important Dante includes the figure of Joachim of Fiore, who parallels Siger of Brabant in the first circle. Just as Aquinas and his rival Siger stand beside one another in the harmonious Heaven of the Sun, so Bonaventure stands next to Joachim—like Siger, a figure of questionable orthodoxy. Joachim (1132–1202) was a Cistercian whose apocryphal mystical prophesies included the doctrine of the “Everlasting Gospel,” which held that the dispensation of the Father (from the time of Moses to the time of Christ) and the dispensation of the Son (history since the time of Christ) were to be followed by the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, to begin in the year 1260—the year when he anticipated the defeat of Antichrist. Joachim prophesied that monks like him would ultimately defeat Antichrist, thereby ushering in a time of peace and freedom when there would no longer be any need for the discipline of institutions, and all would live in a utopia of contemplation. Although “Joachism” was condemned at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and again by Pope Alexander IV in 1256, the Spiritualist Franciscans adopted Joachim’s doctrine, which was vigorously opposed by the general of the Franciscan order—Bonaventure himself. But like the controversial Siger, Joachim is accorded a place here among the blessed, and in the mystery of divine caritas that supersedes worldly debate, Bonaventure and Joachim are reconciled in the circle of love. Dante’s exhortation to the reader to imagine 24 stars of Heaven arrayed in concentric circles opens Canto 13. His reference to the 15 brightest stars alludes to the Ptolemaic dictum that there were precisely 15 stars of the first magnitude in the sky. To these the reader is to add the seven stars of the “Wain,” the medieval name for Ursa Major, or the Big Dipper. The final two stars are to be the “Horn”—the two brightest stars of Ursa Minor, or the Little Dipper (including the North Star, which Dante calls the “axis for the Primum Mobile” in l. 12). Ultimately however it is beyond the mind’s capacity to imagine the display as the pilgrim witnessed it, since the event exceeds human

understanding as far as the speed of the Primum Mobile (conceived to be the fastest movement in the universe) exceeds the movement of the Chiana River—in Dante’s time a Tuscan stream that in many places was almost completely stagnant. The most difficult aspect of this canto concerns Aquinas’s response to the pilgrim’s difficulty with his previous comment about the wisdom of Solomon. Here with the careful precision of a Scholastic philosopher Aquinas builds a detailed argument as to why Adam and the incarnate Jesus Christ were the wisest human beings who ever lived, but Solomon was the wisest of kings. Aquinas relates first how the entire created universe is a reflection of God’s divine Idea (which is in essence the Word, or the Son). God the Father contemplates the Word, and through the love of the Holy Spirit, that Idea is reflected through the nine orders of angels who turn the heavenly spheres. The infinite light of the Creator is thus passed through the spheres and into the mundane world of matter, where it ultimately creates all transient things, both animate and inanimate. This indirect creative activity is the force of Nature, which impresses the divine Idea onto prime matter like a seal in wax (ll. 66–69). Individual people, animals, plants, or minerals are variously created according to the imperfect disposition of Nature (the “seal”) and the individual material substance (the “wax”), so that no creature is the perfect copy of the divine Idea that has been diminished by reflection through so many degrees of creation. Thus Nature is like an artist who may have in mind the ideal form she wants to create but whose trembling hand is unable to execute that ideal form perfectly. Only Adam and Christ, created directly by God without the intermediary of Nature, were perfect creations, and hence perfect in wisdom. In this way Aquinas is able to concede that the pilgrim was correct in his assumption that Solomon’s wisdom did not approach Adam’s or Christ’s but still defend his previous contention that “there never arose a second with such vision” (Canto 10, l. 114). Solomon was a product of Nature in the usual sense and “arose” from the rest of humanity to become a king. It is as a king that Solomon was unsurpassed in wisdom—specifically in wisdom

Paradiso related to governing, and not related to metaphysics, dialectic, geometry, or any other field without direct practical application to the sphere of government. Having thus explained his statement through carefully distinguishing the terms and categories he used, Aquinas warns the pilgrim—and the rest of mankind—not to jump to hasty conclusions (as the pilgrim had in response to Aquinas’s evaluation of Solomon). Making quick judgments without careful distinctions can lead to error. Aquinas first lists three philosophers who reached foolish conclusions through such hasty judgments: Parmenides and his follower Melissus—advocates of the Eleatic philosophy that held that all things came from and returned to the sun—and Bryson, a mathematician who attempted to square the circle. These three are refuted and disparaged by Aristotle in the Organon. Aquinas follows these with examples of two heretics who reached foolish conclusions based on such overhasty reasoning: Sabellius, advocate of the Monarchian heresy (which held that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were not separate persons but different terms for the one God), and Arius, founder of the Arian heresy (which held that the Son was not of the same substance as the Father, was a created Being, and hence inferior to the Father). If such famous scholars could err, Aquinas warns the average person not to be quick to judge. No one on earth can know the inscrutable ways of providence, Aquinas warns, and thus none of us should presume to know God’s judgment of any individual. We cannot presume to know that the thief will be damned or the generous man saved. Only God can judge the fate of souls. Behind this admonition is certainly the debate about the fate of Solomon’s soul alluded to in the 10th canto. It may, in addition, allude to figures like Siger of Brabant and Joachim of Fiore in the previous cantos. No one, Aquinas argues, should presume to know God’s judgment. The chief concern of Canto 14—the resurrection of the body—parallels that of the approximately equivalent canto of the Inferno: In Canto 13 of that first canticle Dante and Virgil are in the Wood of the Suicides and learn that the ultimate

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punishment of the suicides, trapped for eternity in the forms of trees, is to reclaim their resurrected bodies but “never again to wear them” (l. 104). Instead as Pier delle Vigne tells the pilgrim, “our bodies shall hang forever more, / each one on a thorn of its own alien shade” (ll. 107–108). Here in Heaven the souls anticipate with ecstatic joy the soul’s reunion with the body, an act that will complete and perfect them. When Beatrice expresses Dante’s yet-unformed question as to whether the souls’ brilliance will continue at this level after they are reunited with their bodies, and, if so, how the bodily eyes can endure such dazzling intensity, appropriately it is Solomon who answers. As the presumed author of the “Song of Songs” Solomon created what the Middle Ages interpreted as an allegory of the union of the divine and the human—or, Singleton points out, the soul and the body (3, 243). Solomon’s explanation of the radiance of the souls is an expansion of what Beatrice has already told the pilgrim at the beginning of Canto 5: The brightness of the soul is a reflection of the intensity of its love. The love’s strength depends upon the degree of the soul’s understanding. And that understanding is determined by the grace God bestows on each individual. The reunification of soul and body on the Day of Judgment will move these souls closer to perfection. At this point the reader should recall Virgil’s assertion at the end of Canto 6 of the Inferno: There the pilgrim had asked whether the tormented souls would feel the same pain after Judgment Day, and Virgil had answered by citing Aristotle, saying “the closer a thing comes to its perfection, / more keen will be its pleasure or its pain” (ll. 107–108). As the souls in Heaven are completed and perfected, their pleasure will be made more perfect. Part of that perfect pleasure will be the reunification, in bodily form, with loved ones (spouses, parents, children), and the ability to enjoy perfect bliss with them. The resurrection bodies thus confer even more grace on the blessed souls, and that increased grace will strengthen the souls’ understanding and hence their love. Therefore they will glow even brighter at that time. But the perfected eyes of the resurrection body will be strong enough to bear any brightness. This question, quaint as it may seem to

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modern readers, was much debated among Scholastic philosophers, and here (as in most things) Dante is in agreement with Thomas Aquinas, who concluded that “though the clarity of a glorified body surpasses the clarity of the sun, it does not by its nature disturb the sight but soothes it” (ST 3, suppl., q. 85, a. 2). Scholars disagree as to just who the souls are who form the third circle that takes shape around the other two when Solomon has finished speaking. Perhaps it is a group of lesser philosophers and theologians. Perhaps it is all the remaining souls in this sphere. But the symbolism of the circle is more important than the precise identification of its constituents. In line 76 Dante addresses the radiant souls making up this ring as “sparks of truth that are the Holy Spirit!” Of course any group of three in the Comedy suggests the Trinity on at least one level, and Dante here invites us to associate the first two rings with the Father and the Son. Further the three rings and the three persons of the Trinity are also associated with the threefold process that Solomon has outlined for the beatified souls in this sphere: Grace is from the Father, vision or understanding from the Son (the divine Idea or Logos of Canto 13), and love from the Holy Spirit. Now the pilgrim rises with Beatrice to the fifth sphere, which he recognizes as the sphere of Mars by its red glow. Mars is the sphere of Christian warriors, the front line of the Church Militant. The cross formed by the beams of light and the image of the crucified Christ briefly recall, obviously, Christ’s own conquest of death, and the words arise and conquer—which the pilgrim recognizes from the hymn the spirits sing—are borrowed from the Easter liturgy of the church. But the words and the cross are equally appropriate as representations of the crusaders—who bore the cross as their coat of arms—and other blessed warriors populating this sphere. With Canto 15 Beatrice and the pilgrim have reached the fifth sphere, midpoint of the nine heavenly spheres. At the same time Dante is approaching the three central cantos of the Paradiso, and as he has shown in the previous canticles, the central cantos are points of high significance. It is Dante’s martyred ancestor Cacciaguida whose voice will

dominate these cantos. A knight of the Second Crusade, Cacciaguida is honored here among the warriors of God. He greets the pilgrim in Latin (the only soul in the Comedy to do so) with words that allude to Anchises’ meeting with his son, Aeneas, in Virgil’s Aeneid. Just as Anchises showed Aeneas his destined future as ancestor of the Roman nation, so Cacciaguida will reveal to the pilgrim his coming exile and his destiny as poet of the Comedy. Also in his Latin greeting Cacciaguida cries to the pilgrim, “To whom, as to thee, was heaven’s gate twice opened?” Thus Cacciaguida indirectly shows the pilgrim that his salvation is assured—he will indeed enter Heaven a second time. Of course, like the other souls in Heaven, Cacciaguida knows what the pilgrim wishes to ask, but he wants the pleasure of hearing his descendant speak. This may explain the extraordinarily lofty style Dante uses in the five tercets in which he asks Cacciaguida’s identity. This speech is difficult to follow: First Dante describes God as the “First Equality” (l. 74) because, in his perfection, the qualities of intellect and love (so important throughout the Paradiso) are perfectly balanced. In addressing the souls of this sphere, the pilgrim says that this same balance appears in each of them as well, since in contemplating the deity, they have become like him in this way. Because their intellect is perfectly attuned to their desire, these souls can desire nothing that their intelligence cannot achieve. As a mortal man, however, the pilgrim declares it is not so with him (ll. 79–81). Thus although his heart feels deep gratitude for Cacciaguida’s welcome to this sphere, his mind is incapable of finding words sufficient to express that gratitude. He ends by asking the spirit’s identity. So circumspect is Cacciaguida in his answer that he does not reveal his name until line 135. He does disclose that he is the father of Dante’s greatgrandfather, Alighiero, who he reveals is languishing on the terrace of pride in Purgatory. The precise nature of Alighiero’s offense is left unexplained, but readers will remember the pilgrim’s own acknowledgment that he fears that first ledge in particular (Purgatorio 13, ll. 136–138). It appears that Dante may have considered the members of his family to be particularly susceptible to the vice of pride.

Paradiso The remainder of Cacciaguida’s answer takes the form of a comparison between the simple Florence of his own time and the corrupt commercial giant of Dante’s day. Florence in the early 12th century was a small town whose inhabitants had not given way to luxury. They dressed in a simple unadorned manner, and their homes were small and modest. Their daughters were not married off while still children, and their fathers were not burdened by huge dowries. The immodest behavior of Sardanapalus (the last Assyrian king, notorious for his sexual promiscuity and his effeminacy) had not yet infected the city. Husbands would not leave their wives for long periods while they went off to trade in France, and wives could be certain of their final resting place, since they would not be sent into exile with their husbands as a result of the political squabbling of Dante’s times. The noble Florentine citizens of Cacciaguida’s day—he mentions Bellincion Berti (of the ancient Ravignani family), the Nerli (who had been knighted by the marquis Hugh of Brandenburg), and the Vecchio (a noble Guelph family exiled after the Battle of Montaperti)—lived simple, frugal, and hard-working lives. Cacciaguida ends his invective by alluding to two of the more notorious citizens of contemporary Florence (l. 128): Cianghella, a woman whose loose morals, profligate behavior, and arrogance were notorious (she was known for beating her servants with a stick), and Lapo Salterello, a lawyer and judge infamous for taking bribes (he was banished from Florence in the same decree that exiled Dante). These figures, Cacciaguida says, would have amazed the citizens of his own Florence as much as Cincinnatus and Cornelia would astound the citizens of the contemporary city. Cincinnatus was the Roman leader who left his plow to lead the Roman Republic against the Aequians in 458 B.C.E. and, having defeated them, returned to his farm; Cornelia (whom Dante has mentioned among the shades in Limbo) was the daughter of Scipio Africanus and mother of the tribunes Tiberius and Gaius, known as the Gracchi, who were assassinated while striving to preserve the republic. These figures personify the virtues of republican Rome, which Dante seems to have attributed as well to the Florence of Cacciaguida’s day.

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Finally Cacciaguida reveals his name and his service in the disastrous Second Crusade, led by King Louis VII of France and the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad III. Knighted by Conrad on the battlefield, Cacciaguida died in battle with the Saracens in about 1147. A crusader’s death in battle was considered a martyrdom and therefore guaranteed Cacciaguida’s immediate ascension to this sphere. Because of his own dedication to regaining the Holy Land, Cacciaguida chides the current leadership of the church—“your Shepherds sin” he says (l. 144)—for allowing the infidel Saracens to usurp the rights of Christians to occupy Palestine. Modern readers find little of interest in Canto 16, since its specific references to some 30 medieval Florentine families seem intended to appeal exclusively to Dante’s contemporary readers. The overall themes of the canto, however, are important for the Comedy as a whole, and therefore it is worthwhile to puzzle out its main points. In particular the canto recalls the pilgrim’s meeting with the noble Florentine sodomites in Canto 16 of the Inferno, who ask him to “tell us if courtesy and valor dwell / within our city as they used to do, / or have they both been banished from the place?” (ll. 67–69). It also relates closely to Canto 16 of the Purgatorio, in which Marco Lombardo laments the degeneracy of contemporary society through misrule, as the church attempts to usurp the true role of the Emperor. Cacciaguida deals with both of these themes in his discourse. Dante begins the Canto with his declaration of pride in his noble lineage, a sentiment that seems to contrast with his attitude as hitherto represented: In Canto 11 of the Purgatorio, for instance, Guiglielmo Aldobrandesco had admitted, “My ancient lineage, the gallant deeds / of my forebears had made me arrogant,” and therefore he was doing penance on the terrace of pride (ll. 61–62). In the third canzone of the Convivio Dante had denigrated the concept of nobility of blood and extolled nobility of character. And here, too, he acknowledges that nobility of lineage disappears if new members of the line are not equally noble. Still the pilgrim glories in his blood (l. 6) here in the fifth sphere of Heaven. Of course it may be noted that the pilgrim is still in his mortal form and (as he told Cacciaguida in

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the previous canto) cannot be expected to have become perfect in heavenly love, as the spirits he addresses have. Further the remainder of the canto is designed particularly to undercut the presumptions of family pride. The pilgrim’s pride is emphasized by his use of the formal pronoun voi to address Cacciaguida. Previously he has used this term of respect with Beatrice, with Farinata and Cavalcante (Inferno 10), with Corrado Malaspina (Purgatorio 8) and Pope Adrian (Purgatorio 19), and with his poetic progenitor GUIDO GUINIZELLI (Purgatorio 26). Most important he had also used the form with Brunetto Latini in Canto 15 of the Inferno. As was Guinizelli, Brunetto was for Dante a father figure, one who taught him “how man makes himself eternal” through seeking fame on earth (Inferno 15, l. 85). But the pilgrim has learned that man cannot make himself immortal—only God can do that. He must transcend Brunetto, consign him to Hell, and embrace the true father, Cacciaguida, whose immortality resulted from martyrdom in the cause of God’s love. In the middle cantos of the Paradiso the pilgrim Dante ends his search for the father as he finds Cacciaguida, who transcends all previous father figures, including Brunetto, Guinizelli, and Virgil—and from whom he will learn the truth of his future and his poetic mission. Dante first undercuts the pilgrim’s family pride by comparing Beatrice’s knowing smile with the cough of Dame de Malehault in the romance of Lancelot du Lac (the book that led Francesca and Paulo into sin as reported in Canto 5 of the Inferno). When the lady Malehault overheard Guinevere first declaring her adulterous love to Lancelot, she coughed to warn Guinevere that she knew of the lovers’ secret. Here Beatrice’s smile warns Dante that by his use of the pronoun voi she recognizes his inappropriate pride in his ancestor. To follow the somewhat sprawling content of the rest of the canto, it is best to keep in mind the pilgrim’s request of Cacciaguida. He wants to know four things (ll. 22–27): Who were Cacciaguida’s own forebears? When did Cacciaguida live? How large was the Florence of his day? And who were the citizens worthiest to hold office at the time? Cacciaguida answers the second question first and does so in an indirect way that emphasizes his

astrological connection with the planet Mars and the constellation Leo, both of which underscore his warrior status. The calculation of 580 revolutions of Mars times 687 days per revolution, divided by 365 days in a year, yields 1,091 years since Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary, and thus the year of Cacciaguida’s birth. He was born in a house at the beginning of the “last ward” (l. 41) reached during Florence’s annual horse race on the feast day of the city’s patron saint John the Baptist (June 24)—that is, in the quarter of the old city known as Porto San Piero, and specifically in the house belonging to the ancient Elisei family. Thus scholars have speculated that Cacciaguida was a member of that family, particularly since one of his brothers was called Eliseo. But most important Cacciaguida tells the pilgrim that their ancestors’ names are “better left unsaid than boasted of” (l. 45), mildly chastising the pilgrim for his earlier pride. As for the size of Florence Cacciaguida says that his city was one-fifth the size of Florence in 1300. Population estimates for Dante’s city range from 30,000 to as high as 70,000, which suggests that Cacciaguida’s city may have been anywhere from 6,000 to 14,000, probably at the lower end of that range. The number able to bear arms, which Cacciaguida uses as his measure, would have included men between 18 and 60 years of age, perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 from Cacciaguida’s city. The final 100 lines of the canto are devoted to Cacciaguida’s answer to the pilgrim’s last question. In considering the “worthiness” of citizens, he first finds it necessary to bewail the influx of “foreign” citizens whose numbers have swelled the original pure Florentine population. These newcomers have introduced trouble and strife to the once unified and peaceful city. One of the main causes of this state of affairs are the corrupt Italian churchmen, “the world’s most despicable” (l. 58), who have “played a stepmother’s role to Caesar” (l. 59)—that is, they have feuded with the emperor. This feud has caused the decline of several towns and cities and the uprooting of families and drawn a number of displaced immigrants into Florence. Among the most regrettable of these refugees are the Cerchi family, who emigrated from the small town of

Paradiso Acone (l. 65). Originally of low class the Cerchi eventually bought the houses once belonging to the powerful Ravagnani family (ll. 94–97) and subsequently began a feud with the Donati clan that eventually was to divide Florence into the Black and White factions, respectively, supporters of the Donati and Cerchi families. Cacciaguida also deeply regrets the immigration of the Buondelmonti family. Once owners of a castle in the valley south of Florence called Valdigreve (l. 66), the Buondelmonti moved into the city when their castle was demolished in 1135. It was one of this Guelph family, Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti, who abandoned a daughter of the Amidei clan (“The house that was the source of all your tears” in l. 136) on their wedding day in favor of a daughter of the Donati. To avenge this insult, the Amidei and their allies from the Lamberti clan (the family symbolized by “those balls of gold” in l. 110) assassinated Buondelmonti at the foot of the statue of Mars on Easter morning in 1215—an act that precipitated the bloody Guelph-Ghibelline feud. No wonder Cacciaguida says it would have been better if the Ema—a stream flowing between Florence and the Buondelmonti’s castle in Valdigreve—had risen up and drowned the clan rather than allow them to immigrate to Florence (ll. 143–144). For the most part the other families Cacciaguida mentions were noble at one time but now have degenerated—case after case presented as corrective to the pilgrim’s earlier pride in his lineage. Cacciaguida lists six Florentine families of the 11th century, including the Ughi and the Catellini, who he says were noble even in decline (ll. 88–90). All six were extinct by Dante’s day. He follows with a list of five more: the dell’Arca had died out by 1300, the Sanella were in exile, and the other three had lost all power and status. The della Pressa (l. 100) and the Galigai (l. 101) were Ghibelline families who had been exiled in 1258, and the Galigai’s houses were destroyed by the Guelphs in 1293 along with those of the Galli family (l. 103) and other Ghibellines. The once noble Visdomini and Tosinghi families administered the revenues of the episcopal see of Florence when it was vacant, and Dante suggests that they now deliberately

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prolonged those episcopal vacancies in order to line their own pockets (ll. 112–114). Cacciaguida finally mentions one family that was of low class in Cacciaguida’s day but by Dante’s day had risen to power as an “insolent, presumptuous clan” (l. 115)—the Adminari family—one of whom (Boccaccio Adminari) was given possession of Dante’s property when he was banished and subsequently opposed all proposals to recall the poet. While Cacciaguida enumerates more specific examples, these should suffice to underscore his point: first that Florence has degenerated since his day, and (on a more personal level) that glorification in one’s ancestors is futile—virtue is a function of character, not family. He ends by reiterating that his Florence lived in peace and the “lily on the staff” (l. 153) had not been reversed. He alludes here to the civil wars that had spurred the Guelphs in 1251 to change their banner from Florence’s traditional white lily on a red background to a red lily on white, while the Ghibellines kept the original colors. Canto 17 is the central canto of the Paradiso and so deals with material that Dante considered of essential significance (like Virgil’s discourse on love in Canto 17 of the Purgatorio). As the canto opens, Beatrice encourages the pilgrim to speak aloud his concern, for although both she and Cacciaguida can read it in the pilgrim’s mind, he needs the experience of heavenly discourse, because (as Cacciaguida tells him later in this canto) he will need to return to the earth and speak the truth there. The pilgrim’s question about his own future advances to a climax the autobiographical and political theme of the Comedy. The dark prophecies he has heard so often in his climb through Hell and Purgatory are here brought into the light and clarified by Cacciaguida. In the Inferno Ciacco had predicted that the Blacks would overthrow the Whites despite the counsel of “two just men” (Canto 6, ll. 61–75). Farinata told the pilgrim that he would learn the difficulty of returning from exile (Canto 10, ll. 79–81), and Brunetto Latini told him that both parties would attempt to “devour” him (Canto 15, ll. 61–72). Vanni Fucci, in order to grieve him, told the pilgrim how the Whites would be defeated so that none would escape unscathed (Canto 24,

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ll. 142–151). In the Purgatorio Corrado Malaspina prophesies that before seven years have passed, the pilgrim will learn firsthand the importance of receiving hospitality (Canto 8, ll. 133–139), and Oderisi warns the pilgrim that his own neighbor will help him learn the humility of begging for alms (Canto 11, ll. 139–142). Now Cacciaguida will clearly reveal Dante’s future (as Anchises did for Virgil’s Aeneas) by alluding to Boniface VIII’s plot to put the Blacks in power in Florence, the charges of fiscal corruption unjustly brought against Dante by the Blacks, his banishment from Florence, and his subsequent life in exile, dependent on the charity of others. But first Cacciaguida makes clear that his understanding of the pilgrim’s future reflected in the mind of God does not suggest that these events are predestined. Their cause (and blame) depends directly on the freely chosen actions of human beings. The events in the material world are contingent—a Scholastic term applied to something that is possible (that is, it may or may not exist), secondary (that is, dependent on something else for its existence), and finite (that is, mortal and limited). Divine foreknowledge is perfect because God is a necessary being (eternal and self-sufficient), but his foreknowledge does not impart necessity on contingent events because such events depend on human free will. Dante, like Hippolytus, will be forced to flee from his home city (ll. 46–48). In classical mythology Hippolytus was the son of Theseus and the Amazon queen Hippolyta. He rebuffed the amorous advances of his stepmother, Phaedra, who avenged her rejection by telling Theseus that Hippolytus had propositioned her. Theseus called down a curse on his son’s head, and Hippolytus was killed by his own horses when Poseidon sent a bull from the sea to destroy him. Cacciaguida’s point is that Dante, like Hippolytus, would be falsely accused, and that the accusers, like Phaedra, were self-interested hypocrites. The major hypocrite is, of course, Boniface, whom Cacciaguida calls “the one who plots” (l. 50). It was at Boniface’s bidding that Charles of Valois subjugated Florence and put the Blacks in power in November 1301, leading to the exile of

Dante and his fellow White Guelph leaders. But the presence of his fellow Whites will be, according to l. 62, Dante’s chief burden. Between 1302 and 1303 these exiles were involved in numerous schemes to retake power in Florence. When the Blacks refused to negotiate with the papal ambassador sent by Boniface’s successor, Benedict XI, to make peace in 1303, the Whites planned a major assault on the city but were crushed at La Lastra north of Florence on July 20, 1304. By that time Dante had cut ties with them and become, as Cacciaguida says, a party of one. Dante is told that he will be forced to leave everything that he loves “most dearly” (l. 56). Certainly this includes his native land and his position, but it may also be an allusion to his wife and children—the only such allusion in the whole poem. In one of the most admired tercets in the entire Comedy (ll. 59–61) Cacciaguida describes how Dante will taste the salty bread begged of others and will spend time going up and down the stairs of others’ houses. This comment leads directly to Cacciaguida’s identification of Dante’s first patron—the great Lombard nobleman with the coat of arms containing a ladder (scala in Italian) and eagle (symbol of allegiance to the empire). This was the crest of Bartolomeo della Scala, lord of Verona from 1301 to 1304, who welcomed the exiled Dante sometime before the debacle at La Lastra. The young man with the great martial future (l. 76) is Bartolomeo’s younger brother, Can Grande, who was to become Dante’s dearest patron and to whom Dante would dedicate the Paradiso. Although Can Grande is only nine years old at the fictional date of the Comedy, Cacciaguida predicts that he will be admired for his generosity and his heroism “even before the Gascon tricks proud Henry” (l. 82)—that is, before 1312, when Clement V (the Gascon pope) first supported and then abandoned Henry VII immediately after Henry was crowned emperor. It was in 1312 that Henry appointed Can Grande Imperial vicar and made him lord of Verona. Dante probably entered Can Grande’s service in Verona in about 1313, just after Henry’s death. Cacciaguida has told the pilgrim that because of his poetry his fame would live long after his enemies are dead. Now forewarned and braced for

Paradiso his ordeal, the pilgrim expresses his fears: On his journey through Hell and Purgatory he has learned many uncomfortable truths about members of the most powerful and prestigious families in Italy. As an exile he will need the support and protection of some of these same families. If he writes the truth, he will make his exile more difficult; if he fails to write the truth, he will relinquish his poetic reputation. But Cacciaguida convinces him that he owes it to posterity to speak the truth—that has been a chief reason for his divinely sanctioned journey through the afterlife, and the reason so many prominent people have spoken with him. In this exchange Cacciaguida has given Dante the pilgrim permission for Dante the poet’s sometimes harsh criticisms of his native city, of church authority, and of many important figures of contemporary society. The Comedy’s purpose as a corrective to society, by demonstrating the ultimate punishments and rewards for human behavior, is clearly outlined in this canto. As Canto 18 opens and the pilgrim turns over in his mind the sweet and the bitter aspects of what Cacciaguida has revealed to him about his future, Beatrice urges him to rise above the bitterness. In her allegorical role as Divine Wisdom she reminds him that God is just, and that she will always protect him. As he looks into her eyes, the heavenly bliss he sees there drives out all other thoughts. Cacciaguida has one more thing to tell the pilgrim: He introduces (in roughly chronological order) eight of the greatest warriors of God, who flash with special brilliance within the sparkling souls of the cross. Two of these are Old Testament heroes: Joshua, of course, was the successor of Moses and led the Israelite army in its conquest of the Promised Land of Canaan. Judas Maccabeus is the hero of the apocryphal books of Maccabees. When the Jewish faith was threatened and the Temple desecrated by the Syrian tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Judas Maccabeus led the Jewish revolt in 164 B.C.E.; he was ultimately killed in battle with the Syrians in 160 B.C.E. Four of the other warriors are earlier medieval figures who became legendary heroes of martial epics. Charlemagne had restored the Holy Roman Empire in the West when he was crowned by Pope

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Leo III in 800. He had fought the Lombards on behalf of the pope but was better known for his legendary battles against the Muslims of Spain. The same is true for Roland, Charlemagne’s nephew and greatest knight in the Old French epic chansons, whose fame rests on his heroic death at the hands of Saracens at Roncesvalles in Spain after being betrayed by his stepfather, Ganelon, according to the early 12th-century Song of Roland. William of Orange was another hero of a cycle of French chansons (the best known of which is Aliscans) in which he is depicted as one of Charlemagne’s generals. The historical William reportedly died in 812. Legend says he fought against the Saracens in southern France and that he died a monk. A lieutenant and brother-in-law of William in the epics, Rinoardo Rainouart was supposedly a giant who had been born a Saracen but converted to Christianity and, like his companion, ended his life in a monastery after taking holy orders. The last two warriors are from the more recent historical past: Godfrey of Bouillon, the duke of Lorraine, was well known as the leader of the First Crusade. Under Godfrey’s leadership the Christian armies recaptured Jerusalem in 1099. Godfrey was made the first Christian king of Jerusalem and died a year later in 1100. Robert Guiscard (that is, “Robert the Cunning”) was a Norman warrior who in 1046 joined his brothers in a war against the Saracens in southern Italy and Sicily, conquering much of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily for the Normans and becoming duke of Puglia and Calabria before he died in Salerno in 1085. In his choices of God’s warriors Dante may have been influenced somewhat by the popular tradition of the “Nine Worthies”—the nine greatest warriors of history, who included three classical, three Old Testament, and three Christian knights. The classical figures (Caesar, Alexander, and Hector of Troy) would have no place in Paradise, but Joshua and Judas Maccabeus are two of the Old Testament figures (the other is King David, who will appear among the just rulers in the next sphere). Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon were among the Christian warriors—the other was King Arthur, whom Dante has left out completely (perhaps because of his connection

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with the lechery embodied in the Lancelot legend that led Francesca and Paolo astray). The Cacciaguida episode now draws to a close as the pilgrim and Beatrice rise to the sphere of Jupiter. This episode has filled Cantos 15–17 and has taken up half of Cantos 14 and 18 as well, thus spreading over some 550 lines. Cacciaguida himself has spoken 299 lines—more than any other character in the Comedy with the exception of Virgil, Beatrice, and the pilgrim himself. Now Beatrice and the pilgrim rise to the sixth sphere, that of Jupiter, which Dante calls the “temperate” star. Dante knew (and refers to the fact in the Convivio 2.13.25) that Ptolemy had called Jupiter “temperate,” the mean between the heat of red Mars and the cold of Saturn. The planet’s association with this virtue as well as with the chief of the pagan gods may have suggested to Dante the connection between Jupiter and the just rulers with whom he inhabits the sphere. The pilgrim calls on the “Muse of Pegasus” (alluding to the legend that the winged horse Pegasus had created the Muses’ spring Hippocrene when he struck the earth with his hoof) to help him describe the phenomenal sight he witnesses here: In a performance uncannily reminiscent of an advertisement in modern neon lights, the glowing souls of the just spell out the Latin phrase that opens the book of Wisdom, “Love righteousness, you rulers of the earth” (NRSV), suggesting that all legitimate earthly government must be based first on justice. The spirits of this sphere maintain the shape of the final letter they have formed for some time. It is an M, perhaps suggesting monarchy, the only form of government under which justice was possible, as Dante had argued in De monarchia (1.9.2). The M first shapes itself into a fleur-de-lis, the heraldic symbol of both Florence and the French monarchy. The lily then reshapes itself into the form of the Imperial eagle. The suggestion may be that Florence and France, which in 1300 seem to be charting their own course in league with the pope and against the empire, should instead merge their interests with those of the emperor, as the lily here merges with the eagle, the symbol of Imperial justice. Perhaps the connotations of the lily are what set the pilgrim’s mind thinking about the abuses of the

papacy, but in any case the eagle as symbol of Imperial justice—the reflection of divine justice—spurs the pilgrim to deliver his angry tirade against the papacy’s abuses. It is generally agreed that Dante’s use of the singular pronoun you in l. 130 is a reference to JOHN XXII (pope from 1316 to 1334), the reigning pope at the time Dante was writing this canto. After encouragement in the previous canto by Cacciaguida, who told the pilgrim to speak the truth boldly no matter whom it might offend, the poet here makes the boldest criticism in the entire Comedy. John, notorious for denying Christians the sacrament (the bread of l. 128) by placing individuals and territories under excommunication or interdiction over purely political disagreements, is here accused of doing so solely out of greed: When John canceled these excommunications and interdictions, he received a fee for doing so and amassed a sizable fortune. For Dante this was simony pure and simple, and the unjust perversion of the church’s role in making God’s grace accessible to all. Dante ends the canto with a bitterly satiric portrait of John, who asserts that all of his efforts are focused on John the Baptist—the saint whose portrait adorns the gold florin—but that he knows nothing of his supposed role models, Paul and “your Fisherman” (l. 136) (a somewhat contemptuous dismissal of Peter and his lowly, nonlucrative occupation). Pope John had excommunicated Can Grande della Scala in 1317, and this canto may reflect Dante’s reaction to that event. When Can Grande ultimately died in 1329, he was still under the sentence of excommunication. Aside from Dante’s personal bitterness toward Pope John, certainly one of the reasons for this somewhat digressive condemnation of the papacy at this point is intercanticle balance. We should remember that it was in Canto 19 of the Inferno (the 18th canto of the Inferno proper) that the pilgrim encountered the simoniacs, stuffed headfirst into mock-baptismal fonts in the third pit of Malebolge. Among these of course was POPE NICHOLAS III, waiting to be replaced by Boniface VIII and Clement V. In Canto 19 of the Purgatorio the pilgrim had met another pope, ADRIAN V, purging his greed on the terrace of the avaricious. The choice of his future seems clear to John XXII: He can still

Paradiso repent and thereby join Adrian V in Purgatory. But if he does not repent, John will ultimately replace Clement V, burning in the grotesque baptismal parody in Hell. Jupiter is the only one of the heavenly spheres in which no single individual soul speaks to the pilgrim. Having presented the Comedy’s two most loquacious souls—Thomas Aquinas and Cacciaguida—in the two previous spheres, Dante varies his format in Canto 19 and presents the spirits of the just, formed as a collective in the shape of an Imperial eagle, speaking with a single voice. This suggests not only the perfect harmony that may be achieved within a justly governed empire, but also the unity of will among the just who are in conformity to God’s just will. Justice thus becomes the theme of the canto, which begins with the question about God’s justice toward nonbelievers and ends with the eagle’s condemnation of unjust contemporary Christian rulers. The pilgrim’s burning question, as expressed in lines 70–78 by the eagle (whose individual souls read the pilgrim’s mind), is as follows: If a person born on the Indus River (the extreme eastern edge of the world as Dante conceived it) has never heard of Christ but has lived a blameless life, how can it be just for God eternally to damn such a person? This is a question that has certainly been building since the pilgrim’s visit to Limbo in Canto 4 of the Inferno, where Virgil introduced the souls there who had not sinned but were sentenced to that circle because “they did not know Baptism” (l. 35). It surfaced again in Purgatory when Virgil hung his head in anguish at the thought of the souls—Plato and Aristotle, and doubtlessly him as well—languishing in Limbo (Purgatorio 3, ll. 40–45). Surely the pilgrim here has in mind the fate of Virgil, and of the other righteous souls he has seen damned. The eagle’s answer is essentially no answer at all. First it asserts God’s infinite power, surpassing anything in his creation. To illustrate this transcendent power, the eagle points to Lucifer (“that first proud one” of line 46), God’s greatest creation, who was unable to attain perfection on his own and was cast out of Heaven for his presumption. How then, the eagle asks, can the vastly inferior human intellect

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understand God’s thoughts? All our human mind can comprehend is the great gulf between its own understanding and God’s. From this the eagle goes on not to resolve the pilgrim’s uncertainty but to chastise him for having the audacity to ask such a question in the first place. In this the eagle sounds a good deal like the voice of God answering Job from out of the whirlwind in Job 38.2–4: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? . . . Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (NRSV). The eagle asks, “Who are you to sit in judgment’s seat / and pass on things a thousand miles away, / when you can hardly see beyond your nose?” (ll. 79–81). There might be room to argue and dispute, the eagle concedes, if men did not have the Scriptures, but as it is there is no room to question. Justice, says the eagle, is whatever God says it is. And that, essentially, is that salvation is available only to those with faith in Christ—the Christ to come in the case of Old Testament Jews, the risen Christ for those who lived after. While Dante no doubt believed that the justice of God was inviolable and probably incomprehensible to the human mind, the vehemence of the eagle’s response to the pilgrim seems extreme. This might be explained by the nature of the eagle itself: Conformity to the will of God is what chiefly characterizes the eagle and its one voice. The questioning of God’s justice is, for this conglomerate being, unthinkable. Yet most readers will find the eagle’s answer to Dante’s sincere and intense question to be unsatisfying. Even all Christians, however, will not be saved, the eagle continues—some will end up farther from God than the pagans in Limbo. Over a space of nine tercets the eagle lists some 12 current European monarchs, all of whom are charged with injustice of one kind or another. As he had in Canto 12 of the Purgatorio, Dante uses the rhetorical figure of anaphora, beginning the first three tercets with the word li (there), the second three with the verb vedrassi (the book will show), and the last three with the conjunction e (and). The first words of the tercets thus form the pattern lll vvv eee, spelling out lue (the letter v was interchangeable with u at the time)—the Italian word for “pestilence,” Dante’s

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judgment on unjust monarchs, many of whom he has previously censured. The first tercet concerns Albert I of Austria, titular Holy Roman Emperor (1298–1308), who, jealous of the growing power of Prague, invaded Bohemia in 1304. (Dante has already chastised Albert for ignoring his responsibilities in Italy in Purgatorio 6, ll. 97–99.) The second tercet condemns Philip IV (“the Fair”) of France for devaluing the French currency in order to pay for his wars, an act that caused economic misery in his country. Called in Purgatorio 7, l. 109 the “Plague of France” for, among other things, trying forcibly to coerce Boniface VIII by kidnapping him in 1303 (see Purgatorio 20, ll. 86–87), Philip was killed during a royal boar hunt; therefore his “death will wear the hide of a wild boar” (l. 120). In the third tercet the eagle condemns the kings of England and Scotland for not staying within their country’s bounds, here alluding to the wars of Edward I against the Scots leaders William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. In the fourth tercet the eagle condemns the debauched life of Ferdinand IV, king of León and Castile (1295–1312), and the cowardice of Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia (who had been chastised in Purgatorio 7, ll. 101–102 for lust and idleness). The next tercet attacks the “cripple of Jerusalem”—that is, Charles II of Anjou, or Charles the Lame, titular king of Jerusalem as well as king of Naples (1285– 1309). Called the “third Charles” by Hugh Capet in Purgatorio 20, where he is reviled for selling his daughter in marriage (l. 80), Charles is here said to have an M—that is, a thousand—villainies listed in God’s book of judgment. Two tercets are devoted to Frederick II (1296– 1337), the lord of the “island of the fire” (i.e., Sicily, with its volcanic Mount Etna). Frederick is mentioned in Purgatorio 7, l. 119, as lacking the virtue of his father (Peter III of Aragon). Here the eagle essentially calls him worthless (ll. 133–135). The eighth tercet adds that Frederick’s brother and uncle both disgrace their heritage, the Crown of Aragon. This refers to James II of Aragon, Frederick’s brother (and equally lacking in virtue according to Purgatorio 7), and his uncle, King James of Majorca, who in 1284 joined the French king Philip III in a thwarted campaign against his own brother,

Pedro III of Aragon—a mistake that cost him his kingdom until his nephew, James, restored it to him in 1295. In the ninth and final tercet of the series the eagle adds three more kings who pervert justice. One is Norway’s King Haakon V (1299–1319), who spent most of his reign making war on neighboring Denmark. The second is King Diniz of Portugal (1279–1325). While historians generally see Diniz as one of the better monarchs of the age, Dante may have disdained Diniz for not fighting against the Spanish Moors, or for confiscating the wealth of the Portuguese Knights Templars when Pope Clement V disbanded the order. (Diniz restored the treasure when the former Templars regrouped as the Order of Christ in 1319.) The last king condemned by the eagle is Stephen Urosh II of Rascia (now in Serbia) (1275–1321). In addition to divorcing three wives and blinding his own son for plotting against him, Urosh was infamous for counterfeiting Venetian coins and thereby causing economic hardship throughout the region. The Imperial eagle ends its review of the current state of European politics with the wish that Hungary will escape further harm (the throne, rightly due to Charles Martel, had been usurped by Andrew III), and that Navarre, the Pyrenean kingdom of southern France and northern Spain, might protect itself from French rule. In fact after Joanna of Navarre married Philip the Fair in 1284, their son, Louis, became king of Navarre upon her death in 1304 and then became Louis X of France upon the death of his father in 1314—thus putting Navarre under the rule of the French monarchy. To illustrate the undesirability of French rule, the eagle cites Nicosia and Famagosta, two Cyprian cities suffering under the unstable rule of the French house of Lusignan, whose debauched king, Henry II, made an ill-advised assault on the Holy Land in 1291. He was imprisoned and declared unfit to rule by his brother, Amalric, who was himself assassinated, and the ineffectual Henry was restored to the throne. Once again it is instructive to compare Canto 19 to parallel cantos in the previous two canticles. Inferno 20 depicts the bolgia of the soothsayers, whose attempts to penetrate God’s secrets are pun-

Paradiso ished as arrogant efforts to go beyond the knowledge allotted to human beings—just as Dante’s question concerning divine justice in this canto angers the eagle, who sees it as an inappropriate probing of a divine mystery. The second part of this canto parallels Canto 20 of the Purgatorio, in which Hugh Capet berates his entire progeny of French rulers, including Philip IV and Charles II of Anjou, censured here once again. Canto 20 of the Paradiso also recalls to some extent the 20th canto of the Purgatorio: In the earlier text Dante and Virgil meet Hugh Capet on the terrace of avarice, where Hugh delivers a sweeping condemnation of his descendants in the Capetian line of French rulers for their scheming and their greed. In particular he denounces the three Charleses—Charles of Anjou, Charles of Valois, and Charles II of Anjou—and he repeats the ironic phrase “to make amends” as he lists each new enormity committed by his family. These avaricious rulers contrast sharply with the just rulers of this heavenly sphere, as the hopeful and positive repeated phrase “and now he knows” of this canto contrasts with the sarcastic phrase of the Purgatorio. When the eagle tells the pilgrim to look closely at its eye at the beginning of the canto, we need to remember that Dante is imagining the eagle in the form of the heraldic emblem of the Empire and therefore in profile. Thus the eagle has only one eye visible to the pilgrim. The six souls making up this eye are the most exalted in this sphere of Jupiter, and Dante makes two of them Christians, two Old Testament Jews, and (surprisingly) two pagans. Dante describes six just rulers, devoting two tercets (or six lines) to each of them here in this sixth heavenly sphere. Once again he employs the rhetorical device of anaphora, beginning the second tercet of each description with the same phrase, ora conosce (and now he knows). Thus each of these souls in Paradise now understands something much more clearly than he did in life. In the case of King David he now knows more clearly what part divine inspiration played in the psalms he wrote, and to what extent his own genius cooperated with that inspiration. This question of grace and human cooperation foreshadows the discussion of Ripheus’s salvation later in the canto.

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Trajan, having been in both Heaven and Hell, has learned the great cost of unbelief. Dante’s first readers would have been familiar with the popular legend of Gregory the Great, who so admired Trajan for his reputation as a just ruler (based on episodes like his halting his army to help the grieving widow, related in Purgatorio 10, ll. 73–93) that he fervently prayed for Trajan’s salvation. The legend affirms that God restored Trajan to life long enough for him to hear the Gospel, believe, and be baptized by Gregory. Thus Trajan in fact died a Christian. Hezekiah was a king of Judah at the time of the prophet Isaiah. On his sickbed he is warned by Isaiah of his impending death, at which he weeps and prays to the Lord. As a result of his prayer Hezekiah is granted 15 more years of life. What he now knows is the extent to which prayer may affect God’s foreordained plan without actually changing the providentially determined outcome (ll. 52–54). As in David’s case this foreshadows a later discussion in the canto regarding Trajan’s salvation. This comment also recalls the pilgrim’s earlier discussion with Virgil about the efficacy of prayer, in Canto 6 of the Purgatorio. There Virgil had said that the prayers of souls outside God’s grace were ineffectual, but that those of the souls in grace were loving prayers, which were always in accord with God’s will and so may well be answered. But Virgil, declaring that discussions of grace were outside his purview, tells the pilgrim that Beatrice will have to provide a fuller answer. It appears that these lines are the fulfillment of that promise. What the emperor Constantine has learned, Dante says, is that God does not blame him for the bad consequences of a good action. Constantine’s intent in leaving the Western Empire to the jurisdiction of the pope was charity to the church. He cannot be blamed for the greed and abuse of power that, in Dante’s view, have been the result of that donation. In this Dante is following Thomas Aquinas, who in discussing this precise issue had said, “The virtue of a cause is measured by the effect that flows from the nature of the cause, not by that which results by accident” (ST 1.2, q. 20, a. 5). William II of Naples and Sicily was called “William the Good” by his subjects, who thus distinguished him from his father, “William the Bad.”

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Dante’s William, who married Joan, daughter of England’s King Henry II, was known for his generosity and his endowment of religious institutions, some of which he founded himself. When he died at the age of 35 his subjects were genuinely grieved. They have good reason to grieve now, says the eagle, since the Sicilian king at the time of the Comedy is that same Charles II condemned by Hugh Capet in Purgatory. Now exalted in the Heaven of Jupiter William has learned how much a righteous king is loved in Heaven. The last figure in the eagle’s eyebrow is the most surprising. While the legend of Trajan and Gregory was well known, the story of this second pagan, Ripheus, was not. Virgil had mentioned his death in the Aeneid with the brief comment that he was “of all the Trojans / . . . most fair-minded, the one who was most regardful of justice” (2.426–427). Since nothing else was known of him, Dante felt free to invent Ripheus’s salvation. Living more than 1,000 years before Christ, the pagan Ripheus was given the grace to believe in the Christ to come (like those Jews harrowed from Limbo by Christ). And now Ripheus understands more about God’s inscrutable grace than any living man—for, as the eagle asks, “Who in your erring world would have believed” that such salvation was possible (l. 67)? The pilgrim’s frustration at this group of souls is understandable, since he has so recently been reprimanded for questioning the justice of damnation for virtuous pagans. The assertion that begins the eagle’s explanation needs some explaining: The Kingdom of Heaven “suffers violence / gladly from fervent love, from vibrant hope,” the eagle says (ll. 94–95), not because God is in fact defeated, but rather because “That will wills its own defeat, and so / defeated it defeats through its own mercy” (ll. 98–99). In other words (recalling the situation of Hezekiah) God is always inclined toward mercy and is eager to temper his justice when the loving and hopeful prayers of those in tune with his are offered to him. Here in the sphere of justice we are reminded that the most perfect justice requires the judicious application of mercy. The eagle explains that both Trajan and Ripheus died as Christians. The prayers of Gregory, made through hope and love, moved God to take the

soul of Trajan from Limbo and restore him to his body. In that restored body Trajan accepted the Christian faith and, presumably, was baptized. Of course it should not be assumed that God’s mind had been changed, but rather that he had already granted Trajan his grace, and that Gregory was doing his will by praying for Trajan’s salvation. Thomas Aquinas, considering the case of Trajan, argues that his case is not unique, since the Gospels record others who were raised from the dead. All must have been granted God’s grace prior to the events recorded: Concerning the incident of Trajan it may be supposed with probability that he was recalled to life at the prayers of blessed Gregory, and thus obtained the grace whereby he received the pardon of his sins and in consequence was freed from punishment. The same applies to all those who were miraculously raised from the dead, many of whom were evidently idolaters and damned. For we must needs say likewise of all such persons that they were consigned to hell, not finally, but as was actually due to their own merits according to justice: and that according to higher causes, in view of which it was foreseen that they would be recalled to life, they were to be disposed of otherwise. (ST 3, suppl., q. 71, a. 5)

The case of Ripheus is more complex. Dante begins with the hypothesis that Ripheus’s remarkable devotion to justice must have been inspired by the operation of grace. Ripheus’s willing and avid cooperation with that grace enabled God to bestow upon him the additional grace of revelation (ll. 118–121). His case is not unlike that of David and the psalms discussed earlier. Aquinas speaks of these two kinds of grace—operating and cooperating—in ST 1.2, q. 111, a. 2. More important Aquinas also endorses the concept of special revelation granted to pre-Christian pagans: Many of the gentiles received revelations of Christ, as is clear from their predictions. Thus we read (Job 19.25): “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” The Sibyl too foretold certain things about Christ, as Augustine states (Contra Faust. xiii, 15). . . . If, however, some were saved with-

Paradiso out receiving any revelation, they were not saved without faith in a Mediator, for, though they did not believe in Him explicitly, they did, nevertheless, have implicit faith through believing in Divine providence, since they believed that God would deliver mankind in whatever way was pleasing to Him. (ST 2.2, q. 2, a. 7)

Of course Ripheus lacks the necessary sacrament of baptism, but Dante deals with this difficulty by looking at the meaning and purpose of baptism rather than the symbolic ceremony. In baptism one’s sins are forgiven and one is to receive a new spiritual life through the grace of God. For Dante God’s infusing of the three theological virtues (of faith, hope, and charity) into Ripheus had the effect of a true baptism. The kind of argument Dante presents here was condemned as heretical by the Council of Trent in the 16th century, but it seems to have had some currency in the 14th century, since a similar notion is put forward by William Langland in passus 12 of Piers Plowman, where three kinds of baptism are listed: baptism of water, of blood (martyrdom), and of true belief (ll. 282–283). The canto ends with the eagle’s praise of predestination (ll. 130–132), used here in the limited sense of election for salvation. No one on earth can fathom the mystery of God’s saving grace, though clearly it can extend to pagans (including, it must be assumed, Dante’s hypothetical virtuous soul on the shore of the Indus from Canto 19). So great is the mystery that even the souls of the blessed, who are in direct communion with God, cannot fathom it. They do, however, rejoice, since their wills are in perfect accord with God’s. In Canto 21 the pilgrim enters the sphere of Saturn, which is the sphere of the contemplatives and the seventh and last of the planetary spheres. Named for the mythical god who reigned during the classical golden age (the classical poets’ misreading of the Earthly Paradise, according to Matelda in Canto 28 of the Purgatorio), this sphere is a transitional one, a sphere of silence and a more austere, unsmiling Beatrice. Like the monastic life it imitates, the sphere of Saturn comprises contemplative souls who have left behind earthly concerns.

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The golden ladder is an appropriate symbol of the contemplative life. Most obviously it recalls the ladder of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28.12, “And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it” (NRSV), after which the Lord speaks to him. Traditionally this ladder is a symbol of a connection or relationship between humankind and the heavenly realm. Singleton (Paradiso 2.348) also points out that the symbol occurs as well on the robe of Lady Philosophy in Book 1, Prose 1 of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, where it forms a bridge from the letter pi (indicating practical philosophy, like ethics) to the letter theta (indicating contemplative philosophy, like metaphysics). Further the symbol seems in the 14th century to have become conventionally associated with disciplined spiritual meditation, as it is in Walter Hilton’s late 14thcentury Scale of Perfection, in which the steps represent ascending stages of contemplation with the ultimate goal of union with God. Certainly that union is the chief aim of the souls on the golden ladder in this sphere. One soul, however, descends the ladder to speak with Dante, compelled by the superior force of love and conformity to God’s will. He responds to the pilgrim’s questions by answering the second, or easier, question first, explaining that there is no sound in this sphere because Dante’s mortal ears could not bear it. The first question raises once more the problem of predestination that had lain behind the case of Trajan in the previous canto, where it applied specifically to one chosen for salvation. As the eagle asserted there, so Peter Damian asserts here: No one, no matter how intimate he may have become with the mind of God, can fathom God’s choices regarding the predestined—and, in a kind of righteous indignation that forms a transition to the last part of the canto, Peter rebukes all those on earth who speculate about such things. One can assume that this kind of speculation ought to be outside the contemplative’s consideration as he advances up the rungs of the ladder by meditating on the goodness and grace of God. From here Peter goes on to condemn those wealthy princes of the church who seem to have

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abandoned the contemplative life altogether. Dante’s choice of Peter Damian as the spokesman for this canto was no accident: Peter, born in poverty, became a Benedictine monk and rose to the position of prior and then abbot of the monastery of Fonte Avellana. A prolific writer, he consistently defended the ascetic lifestyle and the strict application of the Benedictine rule, recommending among other practices mortification of the flesh. He worked zealously with several popes including Hildebrand (Gregory VII) to reform the church and in his later years—against his wishes—was named cardinal of Ostia. His sarcastic denunciation of the luxurious and worldly lifestyles of the modern-day prelates, who need an army of retainers to prop up their obese backsides, is doubly appropriate from a figure famed for the extremity of his rejection of worldly vanities. The tercet including lines 121–123 has caused a great deal of controversy among commentators, far more than its relative importance in the canto warrants. Peter identifies himself as Peter Damian, or Peter the Sinner, in “Our Lady’s House” (l. 122). The prevailing opinion now seems to be that Dante is repeating a common error in confusing Peter Damian with Peter the Sinner, who had founded a monastery near the city of Ravenna called Santa Maria in Porto. The ending of Canto 21 is one of the most dramatic in the Paradiso, as the myriad contemplative souls suddenly break the monastic silence of the sphere to shout out a thunderous approval of Peter’s denunciation of the contemporary church hierarchy, so loud that it frightens the pilgrim. In this Dante again repeats a motif that parallels the previous two canticles: In the Purgatorio Canto 20 had ended with all of Purgatory breaking into a loud shout of praise, which in Canto 21 the pilgrim discovers was the response to Statius’s release from the mountain. The shout of righteous anger here parallels and contrasts the shout of joy and praise there. Both of these are paralleled by the ironic foreshadowing of the Inferno’s Canto 21—which ends in the mock-serious military bugle blast of Malacoda’s fart saluting the demonic band of the Malebranche. That comic scene, and the absurd self-importance of the military demons, may even

be deliberately recalled here by the ironically humorous tone of Peter’s censure of the clergy. The description of Beatrice protecting the pilgrim as a mother protects her child that begins Canto 22 (ll. 4–6) will not be the last such reference in the Paradiso. More important perhaps is her translation of the great shout with which the contemplative souls ended the previous canto: It is a prayer, she says, that prophesies the vengeance of God on the corrupt clergy within Dante’s lifetime. Commentators have suggested a number of possible events to which Dante may be referring, including the imprisonment of Boniface VIII at Anagni by agents of Philip IV in 1303 or the election of Clement V in 1305 and the subsequent removal of the papal seat to Avignon. But since Dante clearly viewed both of these as disasters for the Church Militant (see Purgatorio, Canto 32), it is highly unlikely he would have seen them in this canto as the work of God. It seems more probable that this prophecy parallels that of Beatrice in Purgatorio 33, ll. 43–44, and as her “five hundred, ten, and five” does, alludes to some vague future triumph of the emperor (or, since Henry VII was dead by the time Dante wrote this canto, of a leader like Can Grande as the emperor’s agent). The pilgrim’s conversation with Saint Benedict underscores the character of this sphere as the Heaven of the contemplatives. Benedict, born in Nursia (ca. 480) and educated in Rome, became disenchanted with the corruption in human society and withdrew to live in a cave on Mount Subiaco around 500. In about 529 he and a number of disciples moved to Monte Cassino, where Benedict founded what was to become the central monastery of the Benedictine order. It was at Monte Cassino that he composed his Regula monachorum, a strict rule intended to regulate the lives of previously itinerant monks. Benedict’s rule bound his followers to strict vows and committed them to lives of prayer and education, manual labor, and of course contemplation. It soon became the model of all monasticism in the Western Church. The two other souls to whom Benedict introduces the pilgrim are also contemplatives: Saint Romualdo (956–1027) had founded an order of hermits at Camaldoli who followed a reformed ver-

Paradiso sion of the Benedictine rule. They became known as the Camaldolese order. The identity of Macarius is less certain, because there were a number of saints by that name. The two most probable candidates were easily confused, since they were contemporaries and were both disciples of Saint Anthony. Macarius of Egypt, or Macarius the Elder, lived as a hermit in the desert from his 30th year until his death in 391 at the age of 90. Macarius of Alexandria, or Macarius the Younger, is said to have been responsible for some 5,000 monks and hence is credited with the founding of the monastic tradition in the Eastern Church. It seems probable that Dante had the latter saint in mind, in order to balance Saint Benedict directly. However it also seems quite possible that Dante and most of his contemporaries as well did not see the two Macariuses as separate individuals. The pilgrim’s desire to see Benedict face-to-face is certainly understandable, since neither he nor the readers have seen the physical form of any souls since Purgatory. The knowledge that the pilgrim’s vision—associated, as usual in the Comedy, with knowledge—will be complete in the Empyrean is important both as a promise of the grace to be bestowed on the pilgrim and as an assertion by Benedict of the ultimate reward of the contemplative life: The top of the golden ladder reaches the highest Heaven and there finds perfect understanding. When Benedict refers to every wish coming true there, he refers to virtuous wishes—and since only those whose wills are in concord with God’s enter that place, all of their wishes will, indeed, be perfect. As for those who abandon the arduous climb up the contemplative ladder—monks who begin the ascetic life but abandon his rule—Benedict has only scorn and derision for them. His rule has become a waste of parchment, he complains (l. 75), and he castigates modern-day monks for their greed in bestowing the goods of the church on their own families or worse (by which he alludes to the concubines and bastard children), rather than on the poor, to whom by rights they belong (ll. 82–84). From the sphere of the contemplatives the pilgrim and Beatrice rise to the fixed stars in the constellation of Gemini—the sign under which Dante

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was born in 1265 (indicating that he was born between May 18 and June 17 of that year). In line 106 Dante begins what will be his last direct address to the reader, swearing that what he is about to narrate—the culminating cantos of his great work—all occurred just as he tells them. Dante has already emphasized the importance of stellar influence on human character. Brunetto Latini had told the pilgrim in Canto 15 of the Inferno, “Follow your constellation / and you cannot fail to reach your port of glory” (ll. 55–56). Marco Lombardo had indicated in Canto 16 of the Purgatorio that “The spheres initiate your tendencies” (l. 73), though he had insisted that human free will could choose to accept or resist those inclinations. Here Dante credits the stars of Gemini with his poetic talents, since those born under this sign were allegedly inclined toward intellectual and artistic pursuits. Ultimately he turns his apostrophe to his natal constellation into an invocation, asking the stars to grant him the genius that will be necessary for him to conquer his final challenge and to see his work through to the end. No longer will he rely on the Muses sacred to the pagan poets; from now on Dante relies only on the God-given talent and inspiration granted him through the stars that twinkled at his birth. Perhaps the best-known part of this canto is the pilgrim’s backward glance, as he stares down from the heaven of the fixed stars and smiles at the puniness of the inhabited world that causes human beings such great anxiety. The passage is a trope, or traditional theme, going back to the sixth book of Cicero’s De re publica, recounting the dream of Scipio (Dante would have known the theme from Macrobius’s fourth-century Commentary on the Dream of Scipio). A similar scene also occurs in Meter 7 of Book 2 of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. Chaucer was to continue the tradition after Dante, ending his Troilus and Criseyde with the ascension of Troilus’s soul to the eighth sphere, where he looks down on the earth and on his own body and laughs. In Dante’s text the allegorical significance of this passage should not be ignored: Having reached the eighth sphere by ascending the ladder of contemplation, the pilgrim sees the insignificance of worldly concerns. The “puny threshing-ground” that “drives

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us / mad” (ll. 151–152) is the place where worldly men strive to possess as much as they can, sparked by their misdirected love of the lesser goods of the world. The true contemplatives focus their will on the highest good and therefore see the insignificance of worldly things. Ultimately this is what the pilgrim does when he turns from his view of the earth to lose himself in the beauty of Beatrice’s eyes: Her eyes embody the beauty of the highest good that they reflect. The pilgrim’s love of them depicts his rejection of the world’s lesser goods.

DANTE’S EXAMINATION: SPHERES OF THE FIXED STARS AND THE PRIMUM MOBILE (CANTOS 23–29) Synopsis Dante opens Canto 23 with an epic simile comparing Beatrice anxiously watching the sky to a mother bird watching for daylight and the chance to go in search of food for her young. Her expectation is rewarded by the appearance of the hosts of the Church Triumphant. Looking up, the pilgrim sees innumerable radiant lights—all of Christ’s redeemed souls—descending, with one great sun among them that seems to give light to them all. His eyes cannot bear the brightness, and Beatrice tells him that this is the wisdom and power of Christ himself, which created the passage from earth to Heaven and against which nothing can stand. As he gazes at the sight, the mind of the pilgrim expands and transcends his own consciousness, so that he has no memory of what he saw. Beatrice calls the pilgrim back to his senses and encourages him now to look into her face and gaze upon her smile. Now that he has endured the direct vision of Christ in glory, his eyes can stand up to anything. The pilgrim looks into Beatrice’s smiling face, but he admits that he must skip over any attempt to portray it, because its beauty is beyond description. Now Beatrice encourages the pilgrim to look around at the myriad radiant souls of those redeemed by Christ, whom she calls Christ’s garden. Christ himself has now removed to a higher plane, to enable the pilgrim to see more clearly the lights of the souls in the garden. Beatrice points first to the rose that she calls the Virgin Mary,

and the lilies that she calls the apostles, who led humankind to salvation. When the pilgrim’s eyes have drunk in the glorious star of Mary’s presence, to whom he says he prays day and night, a flaming crown descends from Heaven and melodiously encircles the luminosity of the Virgin. The ring of flame sings out, identifying itself as angelic love encompassing the source of supreme joy and summoning the Virgin to follow her Son to the highest Heaven. Now all of the lights sing out the name of Mary, after which Mary herself ascends to the outermost sphere of Heaven, the Primum Mobile— which Dante calls the “regal mantle folding itself round / the turning spheres” (ll. 112–113)—currently so far distant that the pilgrim’s sight is not able to follow her where she rises. Like infants reaching up for their mother, the souls of the blessed yearn after their departed Mary, as they begin to sing the hymn Regina coeli (“Queen of Heaven”) in tones the pilgrim will never forget. As the canto draws to a close, the pilgrim praises the virtues of the crowd of blessed souls he sees in this sphere, his eyes finally coming to rest on the figure of Saint Peter. As Canto 24 opens, Beatrice addresses the blessed souls who remain in this sphere, using the metaphor of a feast to ask that the pilgrim be granted some drop of that truth for which he thirsts. The radiant souls begin to spin wildly at various speeds, reflecting the extent of their joy at being able to share their love with the pilgrim. The brightest of all these lights dances a circle three times around Beatrice, accompanied by heavenly music that Dante can no longer remember. This is the radiance of SAINT PETER, chief among the lights of the Church Triumphant now that Christ and Mary have removed themselves to the Empyrean Heaven. Beatrice, addressing Peter as the keeper of the keys to Paradise, asks that he test the pilgrim on his faith—the faith that enabled Peter himself to walk upon the water. She adds that Peter will already know whether the pilgrim possesses the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love but specifically asks that Peter examine his faith here before these souls in order to glorify the faith that won them that realm by putting it into words.

Paradiso The pilgrim prepares to answer Peter’s questions, comparing himself to a university student preparing for an oral examination. Peter first asks for a definition of faith, and for this the pilgrim alludes to the words of Hebrews 11.1, saying that faith is “the substance of those hoped for things / and argument for things we have not seen” (ll. 64– 65). Like a Scholastic master. Peter asks why the terms substance and argument are used. The pilgrim replies that since human beings cannot directly know the joys of Heaven, for them those joys exist only in their faith; thus faith is the substance (i.e., the material thing) on which the hope of those joys stands. The faith itself then becomes the evidence, or basis for argument, in metaphysical or theological questions. After expressing approval of his answer, Peter goes on to ask the pilgrim whether he possesses this treasure of faith. The pilgrim responds that he does indeed have the coin of faith in his purse. Peter asks where he got his faith, and the pilgrim replies from the Scriptures. At this the saint wonders how the pilgrim knows that the Holy Scriptures do in fact contain the word of God, to which the pilgrim replies that the miracles done in the name of those Holy Scriptures convince him of their truth. To this Peter, like a Scholastic logician, points out that the pilgrim is begging the question, using as proof that which still needs to be proved. But the pilgrim answers that if the Christian faith had spread throughout the world as far as it has without the help of those recorded miracles, then that growth would in fact be a miracle greater than any other. At this all the souls of this sphere sing out a loud Te Deum laudamus (“Glory to God”) in appreciation of the pilgrim’s answers, and Peter gives his approval, finally asking the pilgrim to proclaim his faith by reciting his creed, and then to declare the source of his faith. The pilgrim affirms his belief in one God, the unmoved mover and creator of the universe, who is made known to him through philosophical argument as well as through Moses, the prophets, the psalms, the Gospels, and apostles like Peter himself. And he believes in the Trinity, made known to him particularly in the Gospels. At this answer Saint Peter is so overjoyed that he

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embraces the pilgrim and then, singing a blessing, encircles him three times. Dante begins Canto 25—his canto on hope— with the expression of his own most ardent hope in life: that his poem will win him such favor in his native Florence that by means of its reputation he will be allowed to return to his home, where, at the site of his own baptism at San Giovanni, he will assume the laurel crown reserved for the most revered of poets. He then picks up the story as another brilliant light leaves the throng in this eighth sphere and approaches him and his guide. With great joy Beatrice recognizes this radiance as the one “who draws souls to Galicia”—that is, SAINT JAMES, whose burial site at Campostela was a major pilgrimage shrine. His purpose here is to act as the apostle of hope, and Beatrice requests that he examine her charge on the virtue of hope. James first tells the pilgrim to lift his eyes, which the pilgrim has lowered because of the excessive radiance of Peter and James together. James then charges the pilgrim to take hope to others once he has returned to the world, since God has granted him the grace of seeing Heaven itself before his own death. Finally James proceeds to pose three questions to the pilgrim: What is hope? How much does the pilgrim personally possess? And what is the source of his hope? To ensure that the pilgrim shows no lack of humility, Beatrice begins by answering the second question first. The pilgrim possesses as much hope as any member of the Church Militant, she says; that is why he has been granted the grace to leave Egypt (the world) and look at Jerusalem (Heaven) while still in his living flesh. She then leaves the other two questions to the pilgrim. The pilgrim defines hope as “sure expectancy of future bliss” (l. 67) and the product of God’s grace and human worth. As to where his hope originates from the pilgrim cites many sources but in particular singles out the psalms of David—paraphrasing Psalm 9.10 as “Let them have hope in Thee who know Thy name” (l. 73)—and the Epistle of James: “your own epistle” (l. 76). Saint James, blazing the brighter with joy at the pilgrim’s answers, asks one more question: What promise does hope make to

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him? In answer to this the pilgrim cites the prophet Isaiah (61.7), describing a land of peace where men shall wear a “double raiment” (l. 92), and then cites the revelation to John (Revelation 7.9), who speaks of the blessed wearing white robes (l. 95). At this all the souls sing out Sperent in te (“Let them hope in you”), the words of the psalm the pilgrim has just alluded to, and another of the lights brightens significantly and moves down to join Peter and James in a joyous dance. Beatrice identifies this as SAINT JOHN THE APOSTLE, he who “lay upon the breast / of our own Pelican” (i.e., Christ) (ll. 112– 113). When the pilgrim learns the identity of this soul, he begins to stare intently into John’s radiance. At this the apostle, reading his desire in the pilgrim’s mind, recognizes that the pilgrim is recalling the legend that John had been taken bodily into Heaven. John assures the pilgrim that his body has turned to dust on earth, where it will stay until Judgment Day. Only two figures, John says, were ever taken into Heaven “clad in double robes” (i.e., soul and body, l. 128), and John charges the pilgrim to make this clear to the world when he returns. As John stops speaking, the circling dance stops, and the heavenly souls are silent. When the pilgrim looks to his side, he finds suddenly that he cannot see Beatrice—in fact he can see nothing at all. Rather than allow the pilgrim to fret about his blindness, Saint John begins to question him in Canto 26 about the third and greatest of the theological virtues, love, at the same time assuring him that Beatrice herself will return the pilgrim’s sight when the time is right. The pilgrim rests content with the promise that Beatrice will restore his eyes and assures John (alluding to Revelation 1.8) that the beginning and the end—the “Alpha and Omega”—of his love are in God. John pushes for a more specific answer: What was it that compelled Dante to seek this kind of love? The pilgrim answers that both the arguments of philosophy and the authority of scripture are behind his virtue of love. The good, he argues, draws the human will to love, and the greater the good we comprehend, the greater will be our love for it. When we recognize the supreme good of God, we love that good most intently. The arguments of Aristotle, the Old Testament book of

Exodus (33.17), and the opening of John’s own Gospel declare these truths about love. Still John asks whether any other influences draw the pilgrim to the love of God. The pilgrim now seems to understand what it is John wants him to say and answers that the existence of God’s creation, the miracle of the pilgrim’s own life, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the hope of heavenly bliss, and the divine grace represented by Beatrice herself, who rescued him from his sinful error, all inspire his love of God. At this all the souls in this sphere, including Beatrice, sing, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” (l. 68), upon which the pilgrim’s sight is restored by the penetrating glance of Beatrice’s own eyes. When he regains his sight, the pilgrim notes that a fourth brilliant radiance has joined the souls of Peter, James, and John. Beatrice identifies this fourth luminosity as the soul of ADAM, the first man. The astounded pilgrim greets his progenitor courteously, and Adam, as are the other souls of Paradise, is able to read the pilgrim’s desires in the mind of God. He thereby discerns four questions that the pilgrim wishes answered: How long ago was Adam created, how long did Adam live in the Earthly Paradise, what was the true reason for God’s anger with him, and what language did he speak in Paradise? Adam chooses to answer the questions in a different order from the one posed. He reveals first that it was not the eating of the fruit itself that caused God’s wrath but the transgression of the boundaries God had set. As for the date of his creation Adam says that he was in Limbo for 4,302 years before Christ rescued him, and he had lived on earth for 930 years. Adam then tells the pilgrim that speech is natural to human beings, but that the form of speech changes over time, for no human creation is eternal; therefore the language Adam spoke is long extinct—was indeed extinct, he says, before the building of the Tower of Babel divided and scattered human beings according to their different languages. Finally Adam asserts that his entire time in Eden lasted only about six hours. At the close of Adam’s discourse as Canto 27 opens, all the host of Heaven sing out a hymn of glory to the Trinity, which creates such joy in the pilgrim that he feels the entire universe is smiling.

Paradiso But that smile does not last long, for as the pilgrim turns his eyes back to the four brilliant souls before him, the soul of Saint Peter begins to glow with a fiery red tint, and all of Heaven grows silent. Peter tells the pilgrim not to marvel at his change, for the other souls will soon change in the same way, as Peter now begins a bitter attack on his successors in the papal office. In Christ’s eyes the papal seat is empty, says Peter, for the current pope (Boniface) has turned the Roman see into a sewer. At this Beatrice returns red as well, and all the other souls of Heaven change color in a manner resembling the eclipse that darkened the sky at the Crucifixion. Condemning the greed of recent pontiffs, Peter invokes the names of early martyred popes—Linus, Cletus, Sixtus, Pius, Calixtus, and Urban—declaring that they did not shed their blood so that the Bride of Christ (the church) might be wooed with gold. Nor did he and the other early popes intend that the church should be divided into pro- and antipapal factions, so that the pope would actually make war upon fellow Christians. In particular Peter is enraged that his own image is being used as the seal for indulgences and for repeals of excommunications. Nor does Peter see any improvement in the successors of Boniface—the sons of Cahors (John XXII) and of Gascony (Clement V). Such shepherds are like wolves in disguise, destroying their own sheep (ll. 55–57). Peter ends his tirade with the prophecy that God will not allow these conditions to continue much longer and then, as Cacciaguida had, he instructs the pilgrim to speak the truth about these things in his poetry when he returns to his worldly life. At this the souls of this eighth sphere ascend as a group to the Empyrean Heaven like rising snowflakes, and the pilgrim watches them until they are out of sight. Then Beatrice directs him to look downward once again. Gazing down at the earth, the pilgrim notes that he now is over a different part of the globe than when he had previously looked down, having revolved some 90 degrees in this sphere, and he sees the route that ULYSSES had sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules. But now his eyes desire only to look upon the beauty of Beatrice, and as he looks back into her eyes, their power carries him upward into the last sphere, the Primum

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Mobile. This sphere seems to have no variations by which to mark his location—all parts of it appear equal to the pilgrim. Beatrice explains that this sphere is a pure and direct reflection of the mind of God. It contains the other spheres and is itself contained by God’s love. This sphere is the starting point of time and moves all the other spheres. At this point Beatrice suddenly changes her tone and condemns the human sin of greed, which as Circe did turns men into beasts. This should not surprise the pilgrim, she says, because the world has no governor to enforce the laws of a just commonwealth. She ends the canto by prophesying the time when the movements of the heavens will produce a legitimate temporal ruler who will set the world on the right path again. When Beatrice has finished her complaint, the pilgrim looks into her eyes, those enticing gems that first drew him to love her. He sees a bright radiance reflected there, and when he turns, he sees a dazzling point of light, surrounded by nine brilliant spheres spinning around the point at varying speeds, more slowly the farther they are from the intense point. Beatrice explains that all of nature and the heavenly order depend upon this tiny point of light. The closest circle, she explains, moves at great speed in direct response to God’s love. But the pilgrim is confused: What he sees seems to him to be the reverse of the universe as he has seen it, where God surrounds the heavens and the overarching Primum Mobile is the swiftest-moving sphere, and closest to God. Beatrice tells him that the ideal picture he now sees differs from the physical universe. There the greater the bliss, the larger the physical body. In the ideal model it is the proximity to the bright point, the source of love, that corresponds to the intensity of love and speed of movement of each sphere. Thus the innermost sphere of the ideal model corresponds to the outermost sphere of the physical universe. His mind now clear, the pilgrim looks again at the model and sees a vast number of sparks showering from the brilliant rings, all singing, “Hosanna” to the stationary point of brightness. Sensing his new confusion, Beatrice explains that these sparks are the innumerable angels who guide the spheres of Heaven. The first two orders of angels, closest

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to God and most conversant with his absolute love, move the two innermost circles of the model, corresponding to the outermost spheres of the physical universe (the Primum Mobile and the sphere of the fixed stars). These are the Seraphim and the Cherubim, who move most swiftly as they try to become more godlike themselves. The next sphere, that of Saturn, is directed by the Thrones, angels associated with justice. In all three orders the angels’ bliss derives from their vision of God, and their love follows from that bliss. The second triad of angels constitutes the Dominions, Virtues, and Powers, whose love moves the spheres of Jupiter, Mars, and the Sun. Finally Principalities, Archangels, and Angels move the spheres of Venus, Mercury, and the Moon, respectively. Beatrice ends the canto by explaining that Dionysius the Areopagite was right in his catalog of the angelic orders, and that Gregory the Great (whose list differed from that of Dionysius) was mistaken. This should not surprise the pilgrim, however: After all, Beatrice tells him, Dionysius had his information directly from Saint Paul himself, who had actually visited the heavenly realms. When she has finished speaking, Beatrice stands silent for a moment, staring into the point of light that is God’s image. Dante uses a celestial image of the Sun and Moon balanced on either horizon to suggest the brevity of her contemplation. She then tells the pilgrim that she will answer the questions about the creation that she is able to read in his mind. She tells him first that God’s creation of the angels was not motivated by any attempt to increase his own goodness, which was already infinite, but was rather a pure act of love. As for when the creation took place, Beatrice says that there was no before or after for God, but time came into being at the moment of creation. She describes the creation as threefold—form, matter, and form mixed with matter were created simultaneously, as was the cosmic order. Beings of pure act (the angels) were placed high in the universal order, with objects of pure potentiality placed at the bottom. Beatrice then takes issue with Saint Jerome’s belief that the angels were made centuries before the creation of the rest of the universe—reason

should recognize that God would not have left the angels with nothing to do for such a long time. Thus the ordered universe was created at the same time as the angels. In fact, Beatrice continues, in less time than it would take the pilgrim to count to 20, some of the angels rebelled against their creator, incited to do so by the presumption of Lucifer. The other angels moved immediately to perform their loving tasks. They recognized God as the source of their intellect, and their vision was increased by God’s grace. Beatrice tells the pilgrim that grace is received in direct proportion to the zeal of one’s love. Having said this, Beatrice moves on to criticize some of the foolish teachings promulgated on earth. First, she says, those who claim that angels, like human beings, possess understanding, memory, and will are mistaken. Since angels are always in direct communication with the mind of God, wherein all things are contained, angels have no need of memory themselves. Such doctrines, she says, are put forward by theologians who are less concerned with truth than with demonstrating their own cleverness. Some of these are preachers who contradict or deliberately twist Scripture itself to conform to their own conception of truth. The parishioners thus become like sheep fed on air. Christ told his apostles to go forth and preach the truth, not garbage, Beatrice says, but now preachers are more interested in putting on a good show. The parishioners suffer for relying on these preachers, and the preachers themselves get fat on the proceeds they make off of the sale of false indulgences in which the foolish people trust. Returning to the topic of angels from what she calls a digression, Beatrice reveals that the quantity of angels is so great that the human mind cannot comprehend the number. She cites the book of Daniel as an authority on the great number of angels and further asserts that each individual angel receives and responds to the love of God in his own unique way. Beatrice ends Canto 29 by marveling at the magnitude and power of God, who divides his goodness among countless angelic “mirrors” who reflect that goodness back and yet remains whole and indivisible in Himself.

Paradiso Commentary With the beginning of Canto 23 Dante is moving into the Upper Heavens and to mark that transition opens with a simile designed to create suspense and expectation. The mother bird who watches for the dawn is Beatrice, waiting for the appearance of Christ. In this Dante borrows from an ancient Christian tradition (going back to a famous fourthcentury dawn song by the Latin poet Prudentius) that associated the dawn with the coming of Christ. In the simile Beatrice is represented by the bird, thus putting the pilgrim in the position of the nestling, eagerly awaiting what in this case is the spiritual nourishment of the vision he is about to see. The maternal image of Beatrice not only recalls the beginning of the previous canto, in which Beatrice protected the pilgrim as a mother would, but also foreshadows the appearance later in this canto of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the ultimate Christian mother figure. The vision of the Church Triumphant (the saved Christian souls in Heaven) granted to the pilgrim here as he enters Upper Heaven parallels the vision of the Church Militant (the souls of the blessed living in the world) granted him upon his entrance into the Earthly Paradise at the peak of Mount Purgatory (Canto 28). Both are symbolic visions. There the allegory took the form of a glorious pageant. Here the Church Triumphant is presented as a dazzling light show, in which Christ himself is a luminous sun, whose light is reflected from the thousands of stars that are the souls of the blessed. Beatrice calls these blessed spirits the “fruit / harvested from the turning of these spheres” (ll. 20–21). The image suggests that these souls had been a part of the Church Militant in the world of time, under the turning spheres, and now having reached maturity have been “harvested” into the Church Triumphant in Paradise. This distinguishes them from the angels, who have always been citizens of Heaven and part of the Church Triumphant. The image also recalls the pilgrim’s previous comments about predestination and about the influence of the spheres on human behavior— like the influence of Gemini on his own genius discussed in Canto 22. The spheres—transmitters of God’s providence—shaped these souls for good,

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and those who have been harvested were those who responded positively to that shaping power. Beatrice calls Christ the “wisdom and power,” alluding to 1 Corinthians 1.24, in which Paul says that “to those who are the called,” Christ is “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” In this role as God’s power and wisdom Christ had opened the door to Heaven that had been closed to the human race since the time of Adam’s sin. Even the faithful who lived prior to the Incarnation had to wait in Limbo until Christ’s Crucifixion opened the way for them—a situation graphically illustrated for medieval Christians by the image of the Harrowing of Hell. The pilgrim’s experience of the blinding vision of Christ and the Church Triumphant is the kind of mystical ecstasy that cannot be comprehended by the rational mind. We should recall Dante’s caveat at the beginning of the Paradiso, when he asserted that he would write “as much of Heaven’s holy realm / as I could store and treasure in my mind” (Canto 1, ll. 10–11), implying that much of the experience could not be recalled to his memory. The pilgrim’s vision of Christ in triumph seems to be a transforming one, fitting him for the new experiences he will be facing in the upper spheres of Heaven. At the beginning of Canto 21 Beatrice had hidden her smile from him, warning him that his worldly eyes could not bear its glory in these heights. Now that the pilgrim has borne the dazzling vision of Christ, his eyes have been acclimated to the heavenly sights he is about to witness. Thus in line 48 Beatrice now invites the pilgrim to look upon her smile. Once again the pilgrim’s experience here parallels the events upon his entrance into the Earthly Paradise, for there Beatrice withheld her smile from him as a punitive measure, until he felt true remorse for his sin. When she finally lifted her veil and revealed her smile in Purgatory, the pilgrim found its beauty indescribable: Who, he asks, even having drunk from the Muses’ well of Parnassus, “could find with all of his poetic gifts/ those words that might describe the way you looked,” (Canto 31, ll. 140–143). Similarly now that he sees her smile here in Paradise, he declares that its beauty is beyond the power of any human expression: no poet inspired by Polyhymnia (the

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Muse of sacred poetry) or any of her sister Muses could articulate even “one one-thousandth / part of the truth about her sacred smile” (ll. 58–59). In the later part of the canto as the brilliant light of Christ has withdrawn, the pilgrim looks upon the blessed souls of the Church Triumphant, now using the metaphor of a garden to describe them. Thus the apostles are described as lilies (l. 74) and the Virgin Mary (conventionally) as a rose. Later she is called a “living star” (l. 92)—a term borrowed from the liturgy, in which she is called the “morning star” and also the “star of the sea.” Her brightness and virtue exceed all others’ in this Heaven, just as her holiness in life was superior to that of all other souls. At this point it is worth remembering the positive exempla on each terrace of Purgatory, which always included first an example of virtue from the life of the Virgin. We should remember as well that it was Mary herself who initiated the chain of love—moving through Saint Lucy to Beatrice to Virgil—that turned the pilgrim from the wood of error he was lost in at the beginning of the Inferno and onto the road to salvation (Inferno 2, l. 94). There is, therefore, no exaggeration in the pilgrim’s claim that he prays to the Virgin morning and night. The flaming torch that descends from Heaven and surrounds the radiance of the Virgin is an angelic messenger—almost certainly the angel Gabriel—reenacting the annunciation itself and symbolically crowning the Virgin as queen of Heaven by encircling her with a crown of light. When she, too, ascends heavenward, the flames of the blessed souls’ radiances all lean after her like children bereft of their mother—an image that recalls the canto’s opening image of the mother bird. The souls all unite to sing the Regina coeli (“O queen of Heaven”), the beginning of an antiphon sung in praise of the Virgin Mary during the Easter liturgy. As the canto concludes, Dante extols the souls who have won their true reward here through the tears they shed and the worldly treasure they shunned during what he calls their exile in Babylon (ll.133–135). In his allusion to the captivity of the Jews in Babylon Dante means to suggest that for human beings, worldly life is a form of exile from

our true home in Paradise. Then finally the pilgrim’s eyes fall upon the bright radiance of the figure who will become the main spokesman of this sphere in the next canto. By the introduction of him as “the one who holds the keys” (l. 139) it is clear that the figure is Saint Peter, to whom in Matthew 16.19 Christ had said, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (NRSV). Canto 24 opens with the image of a banquet— presumably the marriage feast of the lamb (described in Revelation 19.7–8), which the blessed share in Heaven. At the same time of course it is a banquet of knowledge (the metaphor Dante used for the title of his philosophical Convivio). The blessed partake of this banquet, and what is served is the knowledge imparted by God’s revelation. It is this revelation that the pilgrim burns for, and of which he craves just a crumb or a drop to slake his thirst. Beatrice asks the souls who remain in the eighth sphere to share a drop with the thirsty pilgrim. The brightest light now left in this sphere is that of the apostle Peter. Allegorically this reenacts the situation of the church after the ascension of Christ and the assumption of the Virgin, leaving Peter in authority as the rock on whom the church would be built. The radiance of Saint Peter responds to Beatrice’s request by burning with the joy of love and dancing a circle around her three times (the number 3, as always, suggesting the Holy Trinity). The music that accompanies Peter’s action is so beautiful and holy that the pilgrim’s mind cannot contain it. In words recalling the medieval Scholastic categories of the psyche Dante says that his fancy—that part of the mind that receives the images perceived by the senses—could not comprehend the image of that music; nor could the memory store that image (and here he reiterates the difficulty he lamented in the previous canto, ll. 10–11). Nor finally can he find language to describe the experience (ll. 25–27). Like the typical mystical experience, the pilgrim’s fictional experience is ultimately ineffable. Surely it is no surprise that Saint Peter, the keeper of the keys to Heaven, stands at this point as a final hurdle to be negotiated before the pil-

Paradiso grim can enter the Empyrean Heaven. Nor is it surprising that this last obstacle takes the form of an examination: In the fifth canto Beatrice had established a major theme of the Paradiso when she explained how the brilliance of heavenly souls was proportionate to their love, which was in proportion to their vision (that is, their knowledge). The pilgrim’s vision has been refined through eight spheres of Heaven (perfected, as it were, by the vision of Christ in Canto 23), and now he has reached the stage of understanding that allows him a glimpse of the vision of the blessed—a crumb from their banquet, as the opening image of this canto represented it. Now he has reached the point, as at the end of a course of study, when it is time for his examination. Beatrice requests that Peter conduct the first part of what will prove to be the pilgrim’s entrance examination to Heaven, the part concerning the question of faith. The rest of the examination will concern the other two theological virtues—hope and love—and will be conducted by Saint James and Saint John. In lines 46–51 the pilgrim begins to ready himself mentally for the questions he is about to be asked, comparing himself to a bachelor preparing for a university disputation. The remainder of the canto is modeled on the kind of public examination or disputatio required of university candidates who might be pursuing the master’s or doctoral degree in theology—something that allegorically the pilgrim is about to receive. In such an examination the master would pose questions to the student, who was required to offer arguments for both sides of a proposition, without drawing conclusions (it was the master’s privilege to make a final judgment in the matter). Here the pilgrim answers more directly, though Saint Peter does make a final determination of the value of his answers. The pilgrim must first define faith, and he does so by paraphrasing Hebrews 11.1, saying it is “the substance of those hoped-for things / and argument for things we have not seen” (ll. 64–65). When Peter asks the pilgrim to define substance and argument, the language becomes more difficult for modern readers, moving into Scholastic discourse. Substance is defined by Scholastic philosophers as “that which exists in itself.” Because human beings

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in this world desire the eternal joy of Heaven but have no direct experience of that joy, their hope is based on their faith—which is material or substantive, as the concept of the unseen Heaven is not. Argument, that which is used to prove one’s case, consists of evidence in questions of worldly knowledge but in questions of religion must consist of faith. This may sound specious, but in fact medieval scholarly arguments were nearly always deductive and generally used authority as evidence. In religious argument the Scriptures were the most significant authority, and what gave them that authority was faith. The rest of the pilgrim’s answers concerning faith are quite straightforward, though it should be pointed out that what he seems to consider his clinching argument—that if the world was won to the Christian faith without the miracles associated with the scriptures, then that in itself would be the greatest miracle of all—was one that Saint Augustine had used in The City of God (22.5). When he has finished, the souls all sing the fourth-century hymn Te deum laudamus (“We praise you, O God”), famous as the hymn written by Saint Ambrose and sung at his conversion of Saint Augustine. Sung here as the pilgrim is about to enter the Empyrean, the same hymn was sung in Canto 9 of the Purgatorio, when the pilgrim entered the gate of Purgatory. Clearly Dante thought of it as a liminal kind of hymn, marking transition into a new stage of life. Saint Peter then officially approves the pilgrim’s answers, praising “The grace that lovingly / speaks with your mind” (ll. 118–119), thereby giving the praise to God’s grace that has revealed these truths to the pilgrim, rather than to the pilgrim himself. The creed that the pilgrim recites opens like the traditional Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, expressing belief in one God, the loving creator of the universe, who spoke through the Old Testament prophets, and belief in the Holy Trinity as revealed in the New Testament. Parts of Dante’s creed, however, reflect Aristotelian philosophy— as, for example, when he calls God the unmoved mover (l. 131), an impersonal Aristotelian description. Further he asserts that God can be proved by physical as well as metaphysical arguments—once

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Sts. Peter and James with Dante and Beatrice, from Canto 25 of the Paradiso, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

again thinking of Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of God taken, for the most part, from Aristotle (ST 1, q. 2. a. 3). In loving joy at the pilgrim’s understanding of faith and as a sign of welcome to this exalted sphere, Saint Peter then circles the pilgrim three times, as he had done with Beatrice at the beginning of the canto. Canto 25 is the canto focusing on the theological virtue of hope, and Dante begins it with the expression of a very personal hope: his own dream that the poetic accomplishment of his Comedy will bring about the end of his exile and his return to Florence to receive the poet’s laurel crown at the site of his own baptism in San Giovanni. While this hope is certainly sincere—Dante expresses the same wish both in the Convivio (1.3.4) and in his lyric poetry—his expression of it here also has a

thematic purpose in characterizing the pilgrim as filled with the virtue of hope. The Saint James who greets the pilgrim here is the biblical brother of Saint John the evangelist. With John and Peter he formed the inner circle of Christ’s disciples in the Gospels. According to tradition James had preached in Spain but had returned to Jerusalem, where, according to Acts 12.2, he was executed by Herod Agrippa on the eve of the Passover in 44 C.E. Legend held that his body was conveyed miraculously to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, where it was buried. Saint James’s tomb at Compostela was, in Dante’s time, the most popular pilgrimage site in Europe after Rome. The questions on hope James puts to the pilgrim (What is hope? What are its sources? Does the pilgrim himself possess the virtue of hope?) are similar to those Peter had posed with regard to

Paradiso faith. When Beatrice answers the third question for him, it is in part because by answering the question truthfully, the pilgrim might seem to betray a lack of modesty. The truth of what she says about the pilgrim’s abundant faith is evident by that hope expressed in the opening of the canto. But in part her answer could be read allegorically: In her role as divine revelation her knowledge of the pilgrim’s hope probably exceeds even his own. Her answer also recalls the allegory of the second canto of Purgatory (Canto 2, l. 46), in its allusions to the pilgrim’s mortal life as Egypt, the earthly bondage of the flesh, and his heavenly deliverance as Jerusalem, the promised land of freedom from the corruption of the world. The pilgrim’s definition of hope is derived from the influential Sentences of the 12th-century philosopher and theologian Peter Lombard. As usual it also reflects the influence of Thomas Aquinas, who wrote that “the impulse to hope comes from Grace alone, while our merits are, as we know, a necessary condition of the fulfillment of our assurance of salvation” (ST 2.2, q. 17, a.1). As for the sources of hope the pilgrim offers the Scriptures, in particular the Psalms and the epistle of Saint James. It seems that one of the reasons Dante associated James with hope is the generous reward promised to the faithful in the New Testament epistle of James: “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom he has promised to those who love him?” (James 2.5). Although modern scholars attribute the epistle to James the less, the brother of Jesus, rather than James the great, the apostle, it seems clear that Dante and his contemporaries did not make that distinction. When James asks what promise his hope makes to his soul, the pilgrim again cites the Scriptures, in particular referring to Isaiah 61.7, where the prophet guarantees each man a double portion in his homeland. Dante reads this as a “double raiment” (l. 92), interpreted allegorically (or anagogically) as possessing both soul and body in Heaven. The pilgrim then adds an allusion to the white robes of the elect depicted in Revelation 3.5 and 7.9–17. Again Dante sees these robes allegorically as the resurrected, purified body, glowing white like

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the spirit—a double raiment. This is the pilgrim’s hope: a full and purified life (comprising both body and spirit) in the eternal bliss of Heaven. In this Dante relates this canto with Canto 25 of the Purgatorio, in which Statius gives a long explanation of the relationship of the soul and body, discussing the manner in which the soul becomes the form or generative force of the body. This unique and interdependent relationship is behind the kind of longing expressed in Canto 14, where the souls look forward to the joy they will feel when they are reunited with their bodies after the resurrection of the flesh. Perhaps it is the mention of his revelation that draws the bright soul of Saint John down to join his fellow apostles. As the disciple whom Jesus loved, John represents the last and greatest of the theological virtues, love (caritas). His association with love is clear from Beatrice’s description of him as “the one who lay upon the breast / of our own Pelican” (ll. 112–113). Because in medieval times the pelican was thought to nurse its young by tearing its own breast and feeding its young with its own blood, thereby sacrificing itself to give them life, the bird became a traditional symbol of Christ, whose sacrifice of his own blood gave eternal life to all the human race. At the end of the canto the pilgrim stares penetratingly at Saint John, hoping apparently to see whether the legend is true about Saint John’s ascending bodily to Heaven. This was a popular legend in the Middle Ages, based apparently on Christ’s comment to Peter concerning John at the end of John’s Gospel: “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?” (John 21.22). The legend was so popular in Dante’s time that a fresco in the Florentine church of Santa Croce, attributed to Giotto, depicted John rising bodily from the grave into Heaven. Dante here wants to put an end to this myth and has John himself declare that only Christ himself and his Blessed Mother ascended directly to Heaven in bodily form. Of course this assertion contradicts another widespread belief in the Middle Ages, that the Old Testament figures Enoch and Elijah had also ascended bodily. Dante apparently is of the belief that the two prophets ascended not into Heaven itself but into the Earthly Paradise.

232    Paradiso When the pilgrim turns from the brightness of Saint John’s splendor to speak with Beatrice he finds that he is blind, as he might be after looking directly into an eclipse. This frightens and startles him, for he says, “I could not see, and she / so close to me, and we in Paradise!” (ll. 138–139). No doubt the pilgrim remembers Beatrice’s chiding him in Canto 22 when he showed fear at the shout of the souls in the sphere of the contemplatives. Here as there the pilgrim must trust in his guide and in the goodness of Heaven. The pilgrim’s blindness as Canto 26 begins seems to be the result of his intense gaze into the radiance of Saint John in the previous canto. But this odd detail, following so soon after his vision of Christ had prepared his eyes for the brilliance of Beatrice’s smile in Canto 23, must have some allegorical significance. Some scholars have suggested that the blindness signifies the pilgrim’s ignorant supersti-

The Heaven of the Fixed Stars, from Canto 26 of the Paradiso, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

tion in believing the legend about Saint John’s body. Others believe that it suggests the traditional association of love and blindness. Neither of these seems particularly satisfactory given the pilgrim’s position here, about to enter the highest Heaven. The words of Beatrice at the beginning of Paradiso 5 must be applicable here. Beatrice had asserted that the brightness of the souls in Heaven is a reflection of the degree of their love, and that this love “proceeds / from perfect vision which, the more it sees, / the more it moves to reach the good perceived” (ll. 4–6). Perfect vision is equated with perfect understanding, and understanding of the good moves the will to love the good. If the pilgrim suddenly loses his vision here at the point of achieving perfect love and experiencing the perfect goodness of God, the allegorical significance must be something of consequence. Since it is Beatrice who will ultimately restore the pilgrim’s sight, as Ananias did for Paul in Acts 9.17–19, the allegory must also involve her. In this canto the pilgrim will be examined on the virtue of love. Essentially the situation in these first lines recapitulates allegorically Dante’s love of Beatrice, which ultimately led him to the love of God. In his Vita nuova Dante told the story of how the love of Beatrice came to him first through his eyes—“the gates / she entered with the fire that burns me still” (ll. 14–15). But his first love of her was lustful and selfish, until he is able to devote his poetry strictly to the praise of Beatrice, and finally to the depiction of the departed Beatrice as the embodiment of God’s love and the giver of blessings. Here the pilgrim recapitulates that story, his blindness recalling his initial lust, his restored sight reflecting the blessing conferred by the sainted Beatrice—here in her role as Divine Wisdom itself. Unlike the examinations of his faith and hope, this examination does not require the pilgrim to define love. Instead John asks him only what it is he loves and why. The pilgrim’s answer depends heavily on Aristotle, and on Virgil’s discourse on love in the 17th canto of the Purgatorio. Human beings are disposed to love the good. When the good is perceived and understood by the intellect, the will is inclined to love. When the intellect recognizes the highest good, the will is compelled to love that

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St. John joins the other saints and Dante and Beatrice, from Canto 26 of the Paradiso, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

highest good, God. Citing Scripture as well, the pilgrim asserts that both reason and revelation compel him to his love of God, and in this he follows the practice of Scholastics like Saint Thomas Aquinas. When the souls of this sphere hear the pilgrim’s answers, they sing, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” in the very words used by the citizens of Heaven to praise God in both Isaiah 6.2–3 and Revelation 4.8. When his eyesight is restored, the pilgrim finds a fourth radiance along with Saints Peter, James, and John. Upon learning that this is Adam, the father of all humankind, the pilgrim approaches him with great respect and humility, addressing him as the “one and only fruit / who was created ripe” (ll. 91– 92)—no doubt with an allusion to the forbidden fruit. In the cantos parallel to this one—Inferno 26 and Purgatorio 26—the pilgrim had displayed a similar respectful attitude toward the chief figures of

those cantos. In Inferno 26 the pilgrim is cautioned by Virgil to speak respectfully to the great soul of Ulysses, who, as had Adam, had transgressed the boundaries set by God and attempted to sail to Purgatory himself, and ultimately to regain the Earthly Paradise that Adam had lost. In Purgatorio 26 the pilgrim had rejoiced to find his poetic father, Guido Guinizelli, on the terrace of the lustful. The pilgrim praises Guinizelli’s love lyrics, which he says “for as long as our tongue serves for verse, / will render precious even the ink you used” (ll. 113–114). Looking back from this canto on love and the pilgrim’s own blindness, it is even clearer that Guinizelli’s kind of love poetry celebrates a misdirected love that mistakes the beloved for the highest good. Adam discerns four questions in the pilgrim’s mind, but he answers them not in the order the pilgrim conceived them but rather in the order of

234 Paradiso their importance. He begins with the most critical question, concerning original sin. It was not simply the eating of the fruit (a sin of gluttony) that led to God’s wrath; rather it was the transgression of the boundaries set by God (a sin of pride similar to that of Lucifer—or Ulysses) that begat all other sins and led to Adam’s expulsion from Eden. Adam says that he lived to be 930 years old (Dante takes this figure from Genesis 5.5) and had waited in Limbo for 4,302 years before Christ rescued him—an act that would have occurred with the Harrowing of Hell in 34 C.E. by medieval reckoning (in this Dante follows the world chronology established by Saint Eusebius in the early fourth century). Recalling the fictional date of the Comedy as 1300, Adam must have been created some 6,498 years in the past. The language that Adam spoke no longer exists, the patriarch says, for it was the product of human reason, and nothing created by man can last eternally. In this Dante actually corrects his own earlier opinion, expressed in De vulgari eloquentia (1.6.5– 7), where he had asserted the popular opinion that Adam’s language was God-given, and that after the confusion of human language and scattering of the tribes at the Tower of Babel, it was continued in the Hebrew language. In that earlier work Dante had held that Adam’s first spoken word was el (the Hebrew word for “God”). Here Adam says that he first spoke I—a vowel pronounced “yah” (as was the first syllable of the name of God, Yahweh) as well as a Roman numeral indicating the number 1, symbolizing the unity of God. Finally Adam tells the pilgrim that his life in Eden lasted barely six hours, from sunrise until just after midday. While there had been a number of guesses concerning this question among Scholastic theologians, Dante deliberately chose the briefest estimate, which was that suggested by Peter Comestor (whom the pilgrim had met in Paradiso 12, l. 135). No doubt Dante saw the allegorical significance in the idea of Adam’s expulsion from Eden occurring at the same hour as Christ’s Crucifixion. Further as Dorothy Sayers first pointed out, the pilgrim himself stays in the Earthly Paradise for exactly six hours in the Purgatorio and, as the pilgrim’s second view of the earth from this height

will reveal, he also stays in this heaven of the fixed stars for six hours. Canto 27 opens with a great cry of praise, the liturgical Gloria Patri (“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost”), sung by the souls of the eighth sphere apparently in celebration of the pilgrim’s passing his examination and anticipating his graduation into the Primum Mobile, from which he will enter the Empyrean Heaven. In this way the Canto parallels Canto 27 of the Purgatorio, at the end of which Virgil crowns the pilgrim Dante lord and master of himself as he is about to enter the Earthly Paradise—an act that allegorically prefigures this one. This joyous tumult soon abates as Saint Peter steps forward, red with shame and righteous anger, to denounce the papacy of Dante’s time. His tone is the harshest yet used in the Comedy against the princes of the church, as the thrice-repeated “that place of mine” (ll. 22–23) thunders the first pope’s indignation at the one he accuses of usurping his place, Boniface VIII. Some scholars have seen an allusion in these lines to the thrice-repeated phrase in the scriptural condemnation of false and hypocritical religion in Jeremiah 7.3–4. Certainly the tone is similar, and like Jeremiah, Peter must be seen to be speaking the word of the Lord: Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.” (NRSV)

Saint Peter evokes the names of six early popes (i.e., bishops of Rome). His own successor, Saint Linus, who succeeded him circa 64 C.E., was, according to legend, beheaded by Saturnius in 76 or 79 C.E. The next pope, Saint Cletus (or Anacletus), was martyred during the persecutions under the emperor Domitian in 90 C.E. Sixtus I was bishop under the emperor Hadrian circa 115 to circa 125 and was reputed to have been martyred, though there is no evidence of how he died. The same is true of Pius I, bishop from circa 140 to 155. Calixtus I held the see from 217 to 222 and may have been martyred under Alexander Severus—according to legend,

Paradiso he was killed in an uprising by being thrown into a well. He was succeeded as bishop of Rome by Urban I, who held the office until 230. Urban was purportedly martyred as well, according to the popular legend of Saint Cecilia, but this has no basis in historical fact. As far as Dante knew, however, all of these figures were early martyrs who died for the integrity of the church, and thus as examples they serve Peter’s purpose, which is to complain that he and these other early popes did not martyr themselves so that their current successors might divide the church (into Guelph and Ghibelline, Black and White) and make war on their fellow Christians. Peter’s reference to the papal keys’ being used as the heraldic emblem on Boniface’s battle flag may be intended to recall the 27th canto of the Inferno, wherein Guido da Montefeltro described the machinations of Boniface VIII against the Colonna, his fellow Christians on whom he waged war with Guido’s assistance. What bothers Saint Peter even more is the use of his own image as a “seal to stamp / those lying privileges bought and sold” (ll. 52–53). Here he refers to the use of the seal on indulgences issued by the church, on benefices that popes might have conferred in exchange for cash, and on documents reinstating—again in exchange for cash—the excommunicated. In language Milton was later to emulate with his condemnation of contemporary clergy through the mouth of Saint Peter in Lycidas, Dante’s Peter calls the princes of the church wolves masquerading as shepherds and laments the coming of two more venal popes—John 22 (of Cahors) and Clement V (of Gascony)—who will continue to drag the church down. Dante has alluded to the corruption under both of these popes before, including most recently John (in Paradiso 18), the sitting pope at the time of this canto’s composition. Peter foresees that God’s providence will soon set the church right, as it intervened to allow Scipio Africanus to defeat Carthage. The allusion to this hero of republican Rome suggests that Dante expects the restoration of order in the world to be achieved through secular Imperial intervention. As Peter ends his discourse, he repeats Cacciaguida’s exhortation to the pilgrim to repeat what he has heard here once he returns to his mortal life.

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As in the earlier case this charge provides Dante with a kind of divine justification for his censure of the corrupt papacy. Indeed as John Ciardi points out, the fact that the charge is presented as from Saint Peter himself “is itself the ultimate denunciation” (304). After Peter’s speech the souls of the eighth sphere ascend to the Empyrean and are described as snowflakes falling upward. This is the first of a number of such “inverted” images that will appear in the last cantos of the Comedy—in particular it looks forward to the model of the inverted universe in Canto 28. It seems likely that these inversions are meant to suggest a new perspective of the pilgrim: that he has begun to see things from God’s spiritual perspective as opposed to the limited physical human perspective. Now left with Beatrice in the constellation of Gemini, he once more looks down at the world, to find that he is currently directly above the Strait of Gibraltar. When he gazed down in Canto 22, he was above Jerusalem. The heavens have revolved 90 degrees since he has been in the eighth sphere—one-quarter of a complete revolution. Hence the pilgrim has been in this sphere for six hours (one-quarter of a full day)—the same length of time that Adam spent in the Earthly Paradise. Beatrice now ascends with the pilgrim to the last sphere, the Primum Mobile, or first mover—a sphere without any distinguishing heavenly bodies or points of reference, so uniform in its construction that the pilgrim has difficulty knowing where he is. Beatrice tells Dante that the only “where” here is in the mind of God. She goes on to lecture the pilgrim on the nature of time: The movement of the heavenly bodies is used to measure time, she tells him, but the speed and passage of time itself are determined by this last sphere that encircles all the others. Without its movement there would be no day and night, no orderly progression of the seasons, no stability in the cosmos. Abruptly in line 121 Beatrice’s tone changes to righteous anger. Her motivation is unclear, though part of the purpose of her tirade is structural: Her attack on the weaknesses of the human race here at the end of this canto balances the anger of Peter against the papacy in the beginning. But it might

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be assumed that her description of the perfectly ordered cosmos causes her to lament the failure of human beings to act as part of nature’s ordered harmony. Her denunciation of the human will plays on themes developed earlier in the Comedy. As Virgil had described sin as the misdirection or perversion of love in Purgatorio 17, so Beatrice claims that “The blossom of man’s will is always good” (l. 124), but that greed turns his will from the good. In a much-discussed tercet (ll. 136–138), Beatrice asserts that the innocent whiteness of the newborn human soul turns to sinful blackness through the misdirected love of earthly baubles, symbolized by the daughter of the sun, the enchantress Circe, who in classical mythology turned men into swine. This lack of control is no surprise, Beatrice asserts. Recalling Marco Lombardo’s discourse in Purgatorio 16, Beatrice blames this lack of personal control on the absence of secular authority: “There is no one on earth to govern you / and so the human family goes astray” (ll. 140–141). Once again we may be reminded of the end of Purgatorio 27, where the pilgrim Dante, his will remade in Purgatory, becomes lord of himself—without true justice in society, individuals must become their own moral authority. Canto 27 ends with a very obscure image. In a radical understatement Beatrice suggests that before the inaccuracy of the calendar makes January a springtime month, God will send a temporal leader to restore the world. Dante knew that the Julian calendar (in which the year was 365 1/4 days long) was just inaccurate enough to add a full day to the solar year every century. Thus in about 9,000 years January would become the first month of spring. (This inaccuracy was corrected by the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century.) In saying this help will occur in less than 9,000 years, Beatrice probably means to imply that it will happen very soon. The image of the universe granted the pilgrim in Canto 28 is first reflected in the eyes of Beatrice, a logical process when we remember her allegorical function as divine revelation. What is revealed to the pilgrim is absolute radiance focused in an infinitesimal point, surrounded by nine concentric spheres. The image is a surprisingly mathematical

representation of the spiritual universe. God as an immobile mathematical point suggests his perfect unity, his transcendence of space and time, and his nonmaterial nature. Contemporary readers may be struck by the similarity between Dante’s intense point, which is the source and foundation of the universal cosmos, and the gravitational singularity that modern scientists propose as the source of the big bang. Beatrice acknowledges that the “model and the copy” (l. 56) of the universe are at variance. In this essentially Platonic canto, the model or Platonic form of the universe is the ideal that exists in the mind of God, while the physical universe is a copy of that unchanging absolute ideal form that is the ultimate reality of the universe. In what Beatrice calls the “world of sense”—less real than the spiritual world—the spheres are encompassed by God rather than revolving around him. Beatrice explains the problem to the pilgrim by showing the parallel between the size of the physical sphere and the intensity of love in the angelic intelligences who surround God in the model. Thus the Seraphim, who respond to God with the greatest love and circle closest to him in the model, are the intelligences who move the Primum Mobile, largest and swiftest of the physical spheres, and the one closest to God. The myriad angels who fly like sparks among the revolving spheres of the ideal model universe sing “Hosanna” (as the heavenly host did at the beginning of Canto 7). As Beatrice catalogs the angelic orders, she divides them into three triads (as always, Dante symbolically represents the Trinity). The first triad, associated with the Primum Mobile and the spheres of the fixed stars and Saturn, consists of the Seraphim—the order of angels nearest to God and most associated with divine love (as they have been earlier in the Comedy, most recently in Canto 21, l. 92); the Cherubim—the order most closely linked with vision or knowledge (as they are in Canto 11, l. 39); and the Thrones— the order associated with divine justice (see Canto 9, ll. 61–62). In his brief commentary on these three orders Dante addresses a matter of some debate among the Scholastic theologians: Does the knowledge of God precede the love of God, or vice

Paradiso versa? In asserting that the angels first know God and then love him, Dante comes down on the side of Thomas Aquinas and the Dominican scholars, as opposed to Saint Augustine and the Franciscans. But this tenet has been reinforced by Dante throughout the Paradiso, beginning with Beatrice’s comments in the opening of Canto 5, where she stresses that her brightness results from her vision (or understanding), which “the more it sees / the more it moves to reach the good perceived” (Canto 5, ll. 5–6): That is, knowledge is first, and then the will follows the perception of goodness that knowledge has grasped. The remainder of the heavenly hierarchy (the Dominions, Virtues, and Powers moving the spheres of Jupiter, Mars, and the Sun; followed by the Principalities, Archangels, and Angels associated with Venus, Mercury, and the Moon) is derived from the order proposed in the mystical fifth-century De coelisti hierarchia (“On the Celestial Hierarchy”), in medieval times attributed to the first-century Dionysius the Areopagite, whom the pilgrim has seen in Canto 10 (ll. 115–117). Pope Gregory the Great had presented a different hierarchy of angels in his Homilies on the Gospel (32.48), and that order had been followed by Brunetto Latini in his Trésor, and by Dante himself in the Convivio (2.5.6). But Aquinas had followed the Pseudo-Dionysian order, and Dante here corrects himself. He mentions that when Gregory reached Heaven, he smiled at his error. It is not difficult to imagine Dante smiling as he here rectifies his own previous assumptions. Dionysius must be right, he implies, since his information was obtained directly from Saint Paul himself. Dionysius was converted by Paul in Acts 17.34 and was purported to have been the first bishop of Athens. Thus he was well known to Paul, who (as alluded to several times in the Comedy) claims to have visited Heaven in 2 Corinthians 12.1–4, and who therefore could have provided Dionysius with the correct angelic hierarchy. The first three tercets of Canto 29 describe Beatrice as she is gazing upon the infinitesimal image of God. In an elaborate simile Dante describes the brief duration of her gaze as equal to that instant during the spring equinox when the Sun and Moon are momentarily directly opposite each other on

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the horizons, as one is setting and the other rising. It is an elaborate way to imply that her pause was momentary, but in its evocation of God’s vast creation, from horizon to horizon, the description sets the stage for Beatrice’s learned discourse on the creation of the angels that follows. Beatrice focuses on the angels as God’s first created beings, and Dante draws much of the theology of angels from Aquinas’s Summa theologica. God created the angels in the Empyrean at the beginning of time. He did not create them to increase his own goodness, Beatrice asserts, since God already embodies all possible goodness. Rather God intended for these created beings to reflect his goodness and light and thereby be able to say, “I am” (l. 15)—that is, to be conscious of their own existence and thus share God’s love. As Aquinas puts it: He brought things into being in order that His goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because His goodness could not be adequately expressed by one creature alone, He produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of divine goodness might be supplied by another. (ST 1, q. 47, a. 1)

Beatrice goes on to describe the creation as simultaneous. God, dwelling in eternity—so that the concepts of “before” and “after” have no meaning for him—willed the entire created universe into being in one instant. Like so many things in the Comedy, creation itself was threefold: God created creatures of pure form (spirit without matter, i.e., the angels), he created pure matter (the undifferentiated material substance of which the earth was made, containing the potential for all beings and elements of the world), and he created matter mixed with spirit (by which Beatrice refers to the heavenly spheres, in which form and matter are united). These distinctions Dante takes from Aristotle’s De anima (2.2.414). The perfect harmony of the cosmos came into being in the same moment of its creation, so that the three categories of being mentioned earlier are ordered according to a scale beginning with the angels, who as sheer spirit or intellect are creatures of pure act. They are placed above the rest

238 Paradiso of creation and endowed with the ability to move and influence it. At the other end of the scale of being is pure potentiality, those material things of the earth that cannot act themselves but must be acted upon. Between these the heavenly spheres exist as both act and potential, moved by the angels and moving the events on the earth. Beatrice acknowledges that one influential theologian, Saint Jerome, had written that the angels were created some centuries before the rest of the universe. This she firmly denies, declaring, first, that it is against Scripture, referring perhaps to Genesis 1.1 (“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.”) or Ecclesiasticus 18.1 (“He who lives forever created the whole universe”) (NRSV). But, she adds, Jerome’s opinion is against reason as well: Angels were created to be the movers of creation. Without the spheres of Heaven to move they would have nothing to do, and God would not have allowed such purposelessness in his perfect creation. Dante had used this argument before, in the Convivio, and had taken it chiefly from Aristotle. Immediately after their creation, Beatrice continues, a portion of the angels presumptuously refused to recognize their dependence on their loving creator. In less time than it takes to count to 20, Lucifer and his rebel angels fell to the earth, opening up Hell, for God could not for one instant abide the presence of such imperfection in Heaven. Dante’s logic here must in some sense depend upon the conversation between the pilgrim and Adam in Canto 26: If all creation was instantaneous, and if Adam was in Paradise for six hours before being cast out, then Satan must have been tempting Eve for some time prior to the end of that sixth hour, and so must have fallen from Heaven very shortly after the creation. In this Dante again follows Aquinas, who stated that “the devil sinned at once after the first instant of his creation” (ST 1, q. 63, a. 6). The other angels, Beatrice explains, recognized and loved their creator immediately. The angels had been created with illuminating grace inborn—the grace whose function is to suggest good thoughts to the intellect. This grace is directly proportionate to the love with which each individual soul receives it. In the case of the rebel angels that love turned

away from God’s grace. The others, through the eager and loving response that drew them to God, were granted for that single virtuous act the sanctifying grace that ultimately binds their will to desire only what God himself wills. Once again Aquinas is the source of much of Dante’s theology here: Man’s soul and an angel are ordained alike for beatitude: consequently equality with angels is promised to the saints. Now the soul separated from the body, if it has merit deserving beatitude, enters at once into beatitude, unless there be some obstacle. Therefore so does an angel. Now an angel instantly, in his first act of charity, had the merit of beatitude. Therefore, since there was no obstacle within him, he passed at once into beatitude by only one meritorious act. (ST 1, q. 62, a. 5)

Beatrice, having mentioned Jerome’s mistaken notion concerning the creation of the angels, now refutes the mistaken notion that angels possess memory, and from this she digresses into a more general condemnation of theologians and preachers who promulgate false teachings unsupported by Scripture. In the previous canto Saint Peter had denounced the corrupt papacy; here Beatrice attacks corruption among the lower clergy. Some of these false preachers are well-meaning but mistaken about the truth; others, and these are far guiltier, do not even believe their own sermons but preach unfounded falsehoods in order to impress the simple parishioners and so profit by their illdeserved reputation. Nor, Beatrice asserts, are the people themselves innocent when they believe such lies: “the fact that they / are ignorant does not excuse their guilt” (ll. 107–108), she says, for there are certain fundamental tenets of the faith that they are obliged as Christians to know. Returning to the subject of angels from what she calls a digression in line 127, Beatrice expounds upon the number of angels. She cites the book of Daniel—in whose vision of Heaven “A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him” (7.10, NRSV)—to show that the number of angels is beyond human conception but adds, with no little awe, that each individual angel receives God’s grace and returns his

Paradiso    239 love in his own personal manner and measure. This should not surprise the reader. The need for a variety of created beings in order for God to manifest the fullness of his goodness is clear in the preceding citation from Aquinas (ST 1, q. 47, a. 1). From the very beginning of the Paradiso Dante has stressed the individuality of the souls of Paradise, even while recognizing that each soul’s or angel’s will is in perfect accordance with God’s. The pilgrim’s apparently irrelevant question about the spots on the Moon in Canto 2 led to the explanation that the spots are the result of the varying brightness of the individual angel intelligences who populate the sphere. Here Beatrice assures the pilgrim that no two angels partake of God’s love in precisely the same way. Despite this incomprehensible number of beings reflecting God’s light and love, however, God remains complete and infinite. This is the final demonstration of Virgil’s assertion in Purgatorio 15 that while earthly goods are the subject of envy because what one person possesses limits what others can have, the true Good is different:

the Heaven of the pure light of intellect, love, and goodness, and she promises the pilgrim that he will see the two great hosts of Heaven—the elect and the angels—just as he will see them on the Day of Judgment. As he enters the Empyrean, the pilgrim is surrounded by radiance so that all he is able to see is light, but Beatrice assures him that the light is merely preparing him for this highest realm of Paradise. His eyesight soon returns, and he has an astounding vision of a river of light, flowing between two colorful banks. From the river brilliant sparks fly up to radiant flowers on the shore, then flash downward again into the river. Beatrice instructs the pilgrim that this vision is only a symbol of the truth and tells him to drink from the glowing river. Like a baby hungry for his mother’s milk, the pilgrim thrusts his face into the river and lets his eyes

just as much ardor as it finds, it gives:  the greater the proportion of our love, the more eternal goodness we receive; the more souls there are above who are in love  the more there are worth loving; love grows   more, each soul a mirror mutually mirroring.   (ll. 70–75)

The Empyrean:   Mystic Rose and Thrones of   the Blessed (Cantos 30–33) Synopsis Gradually the model universe begins to fade from the pilgrim’s sight as Canto 30 opens, and as it disappears his eyes are drawn once more to look on Beatrice. Her beauty is now beyond human ability to describe, and Dante the poet admits defeat: Only God himself could do justice to the radiance of Beatrice, and it is the grand “clarion” of God that now begins to draw Dante’s great theme to its end. Beatrice tells the pilgrim that they have now arrived at the highest Heaven, the Empyrean itself,

The Empyrean, from Canto 31 of the Paradiso, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

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drink in the light. As he does so, the river changes from a stream to a great circle, and like masqueraders removing their masks, the sparks show themselves to be the countless angelic hosts of heaven, while the flowers reveal themselves as the souls of the blessed. The circumference of light, more than large enough to girdle the sun, is the reflection of a single ray of the light of God’s love, mirrored off the convex surface of the sphere of the Primum Mobile. All about him the pilgrim sees great petalshaped sections of what appears to be an enormous rose of light. On the petals are tiers of seated souls—all the souls of the blessed sit in stadiumlike rows that expand as the petals rise higher. Despite the great size of the Mystic Rose, the pilgrim is able to see clearly all parts of it, even the distant highest tiers—for here, where God rules directly without any mediator, the laws of nature do not apply. Beatrice takes the pilgrim into the rose and instructs him to look about at the thousands of seats filled by saints of the Church Triumphant. Not many remain empty. One vacant seat is decorated with a crown, and Beatrice informs the pilgrim that this seat is kept for the emperor HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG, who will attempt to save strife-torn Italy before its time. He will be thwarted, Beatrice says, by the duplicitous Pope Clement V, who will publicly promise Henry support but privately seek his ruin. The bolgia of simoniacs awaits Clement, she says, where upon his death he will push the soul of Boniface VIII deeper down into the fiery hole reserved for avaricious popes. As Canto 31 opens, the pilgrim is gazing at the great white rose in which are seated all the souls of the blessed—the Church Triumphant that is the Bride of Christ. The angelic host is in constant motion, like a great swarm of bees, flying between God and the rose of the blessed, to whom they give the joy of God’s love. Never in their flight do they impede God’s light, which shines on everything in the universe according to its own merit, and Dante prays—from his earthly situation as he writes these verses—that God’s light will shine down on the storm of his times. The pilgrim compares his amazement at this view of Heaven to that of a barbarian seeing the glory of Rome for the first time. He is as joyous as a pilgrim who has reached the sacred

destination of his pilgrimage, and as the pilgrim does, he wonders how he will be able to describe the sight when he returns home. Having gazed quickly at the structure of Paradise, the pilgrim turns toward Beatrice with a question but finds she is gone. In her place is an older man with the love of a father in his attitude and the joy of the blessed showing on his face. The pilgrim asks where Beatrice has gone, and the old man tells him that it was at Beatrice’s request that he has left his place in the rose to be the pilgrim’s final guide to his ultimate goal in God. As for Beatrice, the old man points her out in her glory, seated in the third tier of the rose. The pilgrim pronounces an apostrophe to her, thanking her for taking him from bondage to sin into freedom and praying to be worthy of her when his soul parts from his body. Beatrice hears his prayer, looks down upon him, and smiles. It is his last glimpse of her in the poem—she turns from him and focuses again on the eternal light of God. The old man now tells the pilgrim to gaze higher in the rose, to the Virgin Mary, and reveals himself to be the Virgin’s most faithful lover, Saint Bernard. It is through the intercession of the Virgin that the pilgrim will reach his ultimate vision of God. As he raises his eyes to the highest point of the rose, he beholds a splendor that outshines all the others. She shines like the sun and a thousand angels fly around her throne. The Virgin smiles on all around her, and when Bernard sees the pilgrim’s eyes fixed upon her, he turns his own eyes toward her with a burning love. In a state of mystic rapture Saint Bernard assumes his duties as the pilgrim’s guide by identifying the figures of the blessed seated in the mystic rose. Directly beneath the throne of the Virgin, Bernard points out the soul of our first mother, Eve. In the third tier, immediately beneath Eve, is Rachel, the favored wife of the patriarch Jacob, and seated directly next to her is Dante’s beloved Beatrice. In a line straight down from Rachel are Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, Ruth, and a long line of Hebrew women who, Bernard explains, form a dividing line between the two major groups in the rose. To one side of this line, where the seats are all filled, sit the souls of those who had believed in Christ to come (i.e.,

Paradiso    241 the Old Testament Jews). On the other side, where Beatrice sits and where some seats remain vacant, are the blessed souls who believed in Christ after the dawn of the Christian era. Directly opposite Mary, seated at the highest point on the other side of the rose, is Saint John the Baptist, and beneath him is formed a line of Christian saints, beginning in the second tier with Saint Francis, then Saint Benedict, Saint Augustine, and others, forming a dividing line on their own side of the rose. Bernard now points out another dividing line among the blessed: Halfway down the tiers of the stadium is a line that divides the upper half from the lower half of the rose. The lower half, Bernard explains, is filled with children who died before reaching the age of reason (usually assumed to be seven years). Bernard reads a question in the pilgrim’s mind—why are some children seated higher in the rose than others, when none was able to exercise free will? The hierarchy is not simply created by chance, Bernard says, but is a reflection of the portion of grace each young soul received through God’s inscrutable will. Bernard goes on to explain that before Christ’s coming only the faith of the parents was required for a child to enter this place. Later circumcision was necessary for males. Now, however, baptism is required (and the unbaptized infants are confined to Limbo). Now Bernard directs the pilgrim to look directly at the Virgin Mary, who alone can prepare him to look upon Christ. As the pilgrim gazes upon her, the angel Gabriel spreads his wings before her and reenacts the Annunciation, and the souls of the blessed throughout the Mystic Rose sing a response to Gabriel’s “Hail Mary” with joyous faces. Bernard explains to the pilgrim what is happening and then proceeds to identify other notable souls among the blessed. To Mary’s left on the top tier of the arena is Adam, father of mankind; to her right sits Saint Peter, father of the holy church. Next to Peter sits John the evangelist, while on the other side of Adam is seated Moses. Across from these, in the tier beside John the Baptist, is Saint Anne, mother of Mary, seated directly across from Peter and singing “Hosanna” as she admires the face of her daughter. On the other side of the Baptist, directly opposite Adam, is Saint Lucy, Dante’s

The Queen of Heaven, from Canto 31 of the Paradiso, by Gustave Doré. From Purgatory and Paradise, translated by Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1887.

patron saint, who began the action of the Comedy by sending Beatrice down to Limbo to find help for her beloved pilgrim. Having finished his description of the rose, Bernard informs the pilgrim that the time is growing short, and his journey is almost finished: It is time, Bernard says, for the pilgrim to turn his eyes directly to the radiance of God. But first, so that the pilgrim does not assume that he obtains this grace through his own power, Bernard asks the pilgrim to join him in a prayer to the Virgin Mary. Saint Bernard opens the final canto with a sublime prayer to the Virgin that spans the first 13 tercets. He praises Mary as the most exalted of all earthly beings, as the mother of God, as the font of charity in Heaven and on earth. He prays for the pilgrim, recounting his journey through Hell and Purgatory to this height of Heaven and asking that

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Mary help him to “dispel the mist / of his mortality” (ll. 31–32) and grant him the power to lift his gaze to the final vision of God. Bernard points also to Beatrice and the entire host of the blessed, all of whom pray to the Virgin to help the pilgrim to his goal. And, looking beyond the end of the Comedy, Bernard prays that Mary will keep the pilgrim on the right path once he has returned to his mortal life. Mary responds with a loving look at Bernard and then looks upward into the light of God, indicating her acceptance of Bernard’s prayer. Bernard then signals the pilgrim to look upward, even as the pilgrim already turns his eyes toward the Eternal Truth. Now, as so often previously in the Paradiso, Dante expresses his inability to describe what he sees. Returned to the physical world and looking back on his experience, the narrator suggests that the experience of his divine vision was like waking from a dream, when the substance of the dream disappears, but the strong passions the dream invoked remain. The poet prays to the Divine Light to grant him some flash of memory that will enable him to pass along a hint of what that supreme vision was like. In a memorable image Dante describes how the light of God contains all things as if bound together in a single volume, and how the created universe consists of the scattered leaves of that book (ll. 85–87). All things are bound together by love into a unity within the Divine Light. As he gazed on the living light, the poet recalls, it seemed to shine as three great circles of different colored light, like coextensive rainbows—the first reflected the second, and both reflected the third, in a demonstration of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. At last staring into the second circle, he seemed to see the image of a man but could not conceive how that was possible. Suddenly a flash of insight struck his mind like lightning, and he understood the mystery. In the end his vision and understanding fail—his mind can take in no more. But his desire and his will are momentarily in complete accord with the will of God. His will turns, he says, like a perfectly balanced wheel, along with the will of God, which turns the heavens and the stars.

Commentary Canto 30 begins with another sweeping cosmic image, this time in the form of an extended simile involving an astronomical description of the dawn. The pilgrim’s situation in the Primum Mobile is like that of someone on Earth 6,000 miles from the point at which high noon is occurring. The circumference of the Earth in Dante’s day was estimated to be 20,400 miles, so that 90 degrees or one-quarter of this distance—the longitude at which the Sun would be dawning—would be 5,100 miles away. A point 900 miles farther would be about an hour before dawn. Dante suggests that an hour before sunrise, the sky begins to lighten, so that gradually the stars start to fade, until even the brightest is finally obscured by the Sun. In the same way the spheres of the model universe he has been watching begin to fade, as gradually the pilgrim is taken into the Empyrean Heaven. The simile equating this last step of the journey to the dawn implies a kind of rebirth and new life for the pilgrim here in the actual presence of God. The increasing beauty of Beatrice as she has risen higher into the heavens has been a recurring theme of the Paradiso, and here in the Empyrean, her eternal home, her beauty has reached infinite proportions, so that Dante’s repeated occupatio— his protestation that her beauty is beyond human description or comprehension—now rings true. All the verse he has written praising Beatrice since he met her at the age of nine culminates here, where no higher praise is possible. Dante indeed has fulfilled the vow he had made at the end of the Vita nuova nearly 30 years before: “I hope to write of her that which has never been written of any other woman” (Musa, Vita nuova, 649). Allegorically of course Beatrice as divine revelation reaches perfection in the mind of God itself, and that mind encompasses the Empyrean. For the same reason Beatrice now seems about to withdraw as the pilgrim’s guide. In words that recall Virgil’s last words to the pilgrim in Purgatorio 27, she introduces him into the Empyrean “with the tone and gesture of a guide / whose task is done” (ll. 37–38). Perhaps the pilgrim, now directly in God’s presence, no longer needs divine revelation—perhaps he will, at this point, see directly into the mind of God, as the spirits of Heaven have throughout the Paradiso.

Paradiso Beatrice promises the pilgrim that he will see the two great hosts of Heaven, the angels and the blessed. Saint Benedict had informed the pilgrim in Canto 22 that his desire to see the saint in his own mortal body would be granted in the highest Heaven, and in fact that is precisely what is about to take place. Beatrice tells him that “one host”—that is, the blessed—will appear to him “as you will see them on the Final Day” (l. 45), that is, the Last Judgment when the resurrection of the flesh shall occur. The vision of the river of light must have been suggested to Dante by Daniel 7.10 (“A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence”) and Revelation 22.1 (“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb”). Beatrice makes it clear, however, that the river is only a symbol of the truth. The last step through which the pilgrim’s vision (always equated with knowledge in the Paradiso) will be perfected involves his drinking from the river of light. In a scene of spectacular synesthesia the pilgrim places his face in the river and drinks in the light with his eyes. This act of course parallels the scene in the Purgatorio (Canto 31) in which the pilgrim drinks from the river Lethe in preparation for his entry into the Earthly Paradise. This scene is the fulfillment of that one, as the baptism and new birth implied by the drink from the river of light prepare the pilgrim for his presence in the highest Paradise of all. At once the pilgrim’s vision is clarified, and he sees that the river of light (suggesting the linear flow of time) is in reality a great circle (without beginning or end, suggesting eternity). His eternal vision now allows him to see that the sparks flying from the river are members of the angelic host, and the flowers along the riverbanks are the souls of the blessed. His emphasis on his clarified vision in lines 95, 97, and 99—where he repeats the phrase “I saw” three times—suggests his new ability to mirror the light of God directly rather than see that light as reflected in Beatrice’s eyes, and in line 97 he makes an appeal directly to God (rather than a muse or other intermediary) for the inspiration to describe the Mystic Rose.

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The Mystic Rose—a vast stadium a thousand tiers high with a base circumference wider than the Sun—allows the pilgrim to see the blessed in their true forms, in bodily shape as they will appear after the Last Judgment (since in the Empyrean there is no past or future, it seems likely that the blessed here are always in their true state). Since time does not exist here, other natural laws do not apply, and the pilgrim can clearly see the faces of blessed souls at any part of the great rose. The fact that nearly all the seats are filled implies that the end of the world must be close at hand. Beatrice draws the pilgrim’s attention to one of these empty seats—one over which a crown is set in preparation for the arrival of the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VII. The fictional date of the Comedy, 1300, is some eight years before Henry became emperor, so the seat would of course still be vacant. Dante is writing these last cantos of the Paradiso in 1321, eight years after Henry had died. Thus Dante can have Beatrice accurately predict how Henry will go to Italy in 1310, with the public support of Pope Clement V and with the intention of restoring Italy to Imperial rule (and therefore, from Dante’s political view, to peace and justice, and the rule of law whose loss Marco Lombardo had lamented in Purgatorio 16). And she can also easily predict how Henry’s mission will fail, largely because of opposition by the duplicitous Clement, who will die in 1314, a mere eight months after Henry’s untimely demise—because, as Beatrice asserts, “God will not permit him to stay long” (l. 145) after such treachery. She reminds the pilgrim of what he has already seen in bolgia three of the eighth circle of Hell: Clement will fall to that depth and replace his predecessor, Boniface VIII, as the chief sinner among the simonists (Inferno 19). The huge arenalike rose that fills the pilgrim’s view of the Empyrean is a rich symbol for Dante’s readers familiar with the love literature of the High Middle Ages, in particular the vastly influential Roman de la Rose. Here, as in that text, the rose is a symbol of love, but Dante’s white rose denotes not earthly love but the pure caritas of divine love. The rose is also associated with the Virgin Mary, who reigns as queen of Heaven in this coliseum. Further roses are a reminder of Christ’s Passion,

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and on the fourth Sunday of Lent it was customary for the pope ceremoniously to bless a golden rose. All of these connotations are suggested by the Mystic Rose which serves here as the site of ultimate human fulfillment in communion with God. The angels, who continually fly like bees between God and the rose, carry love from God to the rose and back again. They are diaphanous beings, who allow all the souls in the rose an unobstructed view of God even while they fly above them. When the pilgrim turns to face his guide, he finds that Saint Bernard has replaced his dearest Beatrice. The saint remains unnamed while Dante takes the time to pay a final tribute to his beloved guide. No longer the symbol of divine wisdom or revelation, she has returned to her proper place in the rose, just below the Virgin, and the pilgrim expresses his gratitude for the grace that she gave him in leading him out of the slavery of sin and worldliness into the promised land of Paradise— from “bondage to freedom,” as he says in line 85, recalling the song of deliverance sung by the souls on the shore of Purgatory (Purgatorio 2, ll. 46–48). In this last praise of Beatrice the pilgrim changes from the formal voi to the familiar tu in addressing her (l. 81), a change that marks the end of her allegorical function and her return to the role of Dante’s very human beloved, now in eternal bliss. Saint Bernard now becomes Dante’s final guide, for the last three cantos of his pilgrimage. Saint Bernard, 12th-century abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux, was the driving force behind the Second Crusade and the most influential theologian of his time. An adviser to popes, Bernard was instrumental in the condemnation of Peter Abelard’s hyperrational approach to theology. Bernard was known for his mysticism and for his passionate devotion to the Virgin Mary. Allegorically Bernard seems to represent contemplation and mystical experience that will give the pilgrim his ultimate joy in union with God. As the author of visionary treatises himself, Bernard is the ideal figure to guide the pilgrim here. Further since he was well known for his zealous devotion to the Virgin, he can assist the pilgrim in his approach to her. The Virgin is the worthiest of the souls in this sphere, and her prayers on behalf of the pilgrim would be the most effective

in achieving the special grace God may grant in response to the prayers of the worthy, the grace that will gain the pilgrim his final vision of God. This canto begins and ends with images of awe and wonder. In lines 31–42 Dante compares his amazement at viewing the Mystic Rose with that which the barbarians must have felt upon first beholding the monuments of ancient Rome (in particular he mentions the Lateran, the greatest of imperial residences, supposed to have been given to Pope Sylvester by the emperor Constantine). Later (ll. 103–111) Dante compares his awe at viewing the Virgin Mary to that of a pilgrim from a faroff land—Croatia—who travels to Saint Peter’s in Rome for the first time and sees the Veronica (the famous relic handkerchief bearing the image of the face of Christ). Both images underscore the journey of the Comedy as a pilgrimage, an arduous journey rewarded in the end with an experience of the holy place that fills the pilgrim with awe and veneration. All earthly pilgrimages are merely shadows of this, the heavenly goal of all true pilgrimages. As Canto 32 opens, Saint Bernard graciously assumes the role of Dante’s guide. Essentially what he provides is a visual tour around the tiers of the paradisal arena, while he and the pilgrim stand in the golden center of the rose. He points out Eve directly below Mary and refers to the “wound” (l. 4) opened by Eve—the original sin of disobedience—and to Mary’s role in the healing of that wound by giving birth to Christ. This binary relationship between the two women was a widespread motif during the Middle Ages. Five other Hebrew women are mentioned as being seated in the line below Mary, and these include two of some significance in the Comedy. In the third row sits Rachel (second wife of the patriarch Jacob), who had appeared in the pilgrim’s dream in Purgatorio 27 and 28. There she had symbolized the contemplative life, while her sister, Leah, represented the active life. It was from her seat at Rachel’s side that Beatrice was called to save the pilgrim Dante in Inferno 2, l. 102, and here in the eternal rose the pilgrim sees his Beatrice sitting just to the right of Rachel (as we find later, this means that Beatrice is seated just two seats directly beneath the throne of Saint Peter).

Paradiso Below Rachel are other women in the direct line of Christ’s genealogy. First is Sarah, Abraham’s wife and the mother of Isaac. Commentators have suggested that Dante had in mind here the passage in Hebrews 11 in which it is noted that a huge progeny sprang from Sarah’s presumed barrenness, and Sarah is cited with Abraham as the first who “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them” (Hebrews 11.13). To Sarah’s left, we soon discover, are all those who, as she had, had believed in the Christ to come and are now in bliss. In traditional typological readings of Genesis Sarah was often seen as a figure of the church. Also in this same line is Rebecca, wife of Isaac and mother of Esau and Jacob (and thus all of Israel). Beneath her is Judith, heroine of the apocryphal book of that name and an emblem of beauty and courage as well as sincere faith. It was Judith who beheaded Holofernes, the Assyrian general laying siege to her native city of Bethulia—an incident that forms one of the exempla of arrogance brought low on the terrace of pride in Purgatorio 12. Finally in the seventh rank down sits the “great-grandmother of the singer” David, the psalmist and king from whose line the Messiah was to come. This is Ruth, the Moabite woman whose pious devotion to her husband’s mother ultimately won her a place among God’s chosen and made her great-grandmother of God’s anointed king. As Bernard explains, all of these women, like Sarah, believed in the Christ to come, and they form a line that divides the rose into two parts: The seats on their left are the pre-Christian faithful, and these seats are completely filled (Christ has already come). To their right are the seats intended for those who believe in the incarnate Christ. This section of the rose contains an equal number of seats, but some are empty—though not a great many. As did other medieval writers, Dante seemed to expect the end of the world to occur comparatively soon, and the pilgrim himself is striving to attain one of these still-vacant seats. When the last seat is filled, Bernard implies, the Empyrean Heaven will be complete, and Judgment Day will occur. Continuing his circuit of the rose, Saint Bernard directs the pilgrim’s gaze to the seat of John

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the Baptist directly opposite Mary. As did Mary’s, John’s life straddled the pre-Christian and Christian eras, and because his execution at the hands of Herod Antipas occurred two years before the Crucifixion, John spent two years in Limbo before Christ took him to his seat in bliss (l. 33). The line of saints below John forms the other boundary that divides the rose in half. Each saint in this line is familiar from earlier mention in the Comedy, and their ranked positions probably imply a certain value judgment as well. Saint Francis, whose life most closely emulated that of Christ himself (see Canto 11), has the highest-ranking seat, just below John’s. Saint Benedict, founder of Western monasticism, represents contemplation here and is seated directly opposite Rachel on the women’s side. Beneath Benedict is Saint Augustine, most important of the early theologians and defender of orthodoxy against Manicheans, Pelagians, and other early heretics. This greatest of the doctors of the church sits directly opposite Sarah, type of the church. As Edmund Gardner notes, the implication seems to be that theology (Augustine) is important, but that the contemplative life (Benedict) is superior to it, and that the imitation of Christ (Francis) is more blessed still. Dante goes on to deal with the thorny problem of innocent children who fill the lower tiers of the rose. While he had, with perfect orthodoxy, placed unbaptized infants in Limbo, Dante here rather radically places a large number of pre-Christian children in Heaven. This is controversial first because it challenges the general medieval assumption that our risen flesh will compose bodies in the prime of life, not bodies in childhood or old age, as Aquinas had asserted (ST III, suppl., q. 81, a. 1). Second, as Saint Bernard asserts here, in the early days of human existence, if the child died before the age of responsibility (i.e., seven years), then the faith of his or her parents could guarantee a place here in the rose. After the time of Abraham males needed circumcision to be taken to this realm. Those born since the advent of Christ must be baptized. Bernard’s explanation of the degrees of merit among these children, who are here through no merit of their own, is a difficult one. Using God’s inexplicable preference for Jacob over Esau even in

246 Paradiso the womb in Genesis, Bernard argues (as had the eagle of justice in Canto 19) that God’s election of one soul over another is beyond human understanding. Certainly Dante has Paul’s words from Romans in mind: Even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, not by works but by his call) she [Rebecca] was told, “The elder shall serve the younger.” As it is written, “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.” What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” (Romans 9.11–15)

But we must recall that from the beginning of this canticle (Canto 3) Beatrice has stressed the various degrees of beatitude in Heaven, based on each individual soul’s capacity for grace. That capacity is inborn, and therefore, even before the individual soul has performed any willful acts, God is able to assign the infant’s soul to his or her place in the Mystic Rose. Bernard redirects the pilgrim’s gaze back to Mary, telling him that only through her can he be made ready to look directly on Christ. The pilgrim witnesses what is apparently a perpetual reenactment of the Annunciation, with the angel Gabriel singing, “Ave Maria” to the Virgin, and the entire population of the rose singing in response—presumably, they complete the “Hail Mary” prayer begun by the angel. On Mary’s right is Saint Peter, and on her left is Adam. Bernard calls these two souls the two roots of the rose: Adam is the father of all mankind, though here more specifically of those who believed in the Christ to come. Peter is the spiritual father (the first “pope”) of those who believe in the risen Christ. Saint John, inspired author of the Apocalypse, is on Peter’s left, and Moses, inspired author of the law, is on Adam’s left. Directly across from Peter is Mary’s mother, Saint Anne. In what has been interpreted as a touchingly human quality, Anne is the only soul in the rose not looking upward toward God: Instead her gaze is eternally focused on her daughter, in whom she sees the reflected light of God.

Bernard indicates one last significant figure in the rose: Saint Lucy is seated to the left of John the Baptist and hence directly opposite Adam. Virgil reminds the pilgrim that it was Lucy herself, at the bidding of Mary, who first sent Beatrice to Limbo to seek help for the pilgrim’s lost soul (Inferno 2, l. 97). Of course Lucy (symbolized by an eagle in the pilgrim’s first dream) also carried the sleeping pilgrim up the mountain to the gate of Purgatory in Purgatorio 9 (ll. 52–63). The pilgrim’s sight of her here is Dante’s last gesture of thanks to his patron saint. Urging the pilgrim on to complete his journey, Bernard tells him that the time of his “vision” is drawing to an end (l. 139). This word has caused some controversy among readers, since the word vision often has the connotation of “dream.” But it is important that the Comedy not be read as a medieval dream vision. The pilgrim’s dreams in Purgatory (such as the one in which the eagle carries the pilgrim into the sphere of fire in Purgatorio 9) could be interpreted as enigma or coded messages. But from the beginning the pilgrim’s actual journey has been treated as reality. The action of the narrative must be read literally, as well as allegorically (touching all three allegorical levels), in order to communicate the sense Dante intends. Finally refocused on the Virgin herself, the pilgrim is told to pray for her intercession in helping him take the final step of his journey, his gaze at the godhead. Thus at the end of the 99th canto of his great poem, Dante returns to his beginning, at which Virgil tells him that it was Mary’s loving compassion that set in motion the events that were to lead the pilgrim out of his dark wood and into the glory of Heaven (Inferno 2, ll. 94–96). As Canto 99 merges imperceptibly into Canto 100, a spirit of humble prayer surrounds Saint Bernard and the pilgrim as well, and it is their prayer that opens the final canto. The prayer with which Saint Bernard opens Canto 33 has two parts: The first seven tercets are spoken in adoration of the Virgin and are filled with the elaborate praise and antitheses (e.g., “daughter of your son” in l. 1) typical of late medieval Marian devotion. The last six tercets comprise Bernard’s request on the pilgrim’s behalf, that he receive the

Paradiso power to look on God without being overpowered, and that he be able to prevent himself from turning back to sin once he returns to his life in the world. Mary is described as, miraculously, the mother of her own father (i.e., her creator)—both virgin and mother, both humble and exalted. Her own life was so spotless that God himself was willing to enter human life through her. She is extolled as the source of charity that gives people hope, so loving to humankind that she has pity on them even before they ask it of her. So memorable is this prayer that it inspired some of Dante’s first readers to compose in a similar manner: Chaucer opens his “Second Nun’s Tale” (the “Legend of Saint Cecilia”) as well as his later “Prioress’s Tale” with invocations to the Virgin that clearly use Dante’s as a guide, utilizing many of the same images. The remainder of the canto is devoted to the vision of God—a vision (like that of Satan at the end of the Inferno) that readers often find anticlimactic. But one must ask oneself how the fictionalized vision could be anything else. The intensity of a literal vision of the infinite and eternal Supreme Being cannot possibly be expressed in language or even envisioned by the finite human imagination, and Dante makes it clear that he knows this. Still his entire presentation of the fictional vision owes a great deal to genuine mystical experiences as recounted by medieval mystics, including Saint Bernard himself. The American philosopher William James, in his influential study Varieties of Religious Experience, lists four characteristics that mystical experiences have in common. The first of these is that they are always ineffable—they cannot be described in human language. Second the experience has what James calls a “noetic” quality: That is, it imparts some kind of special knowledge to the mystic. Third the mystical experience is passive: It is not in the control of the mystic himself; nor can the mystic return to the experience at will. Finally the experience is transient. It lasts only a brief time and then the mystic must return to the physical world. Dante expresses all of these aspects of his own experience narrated in Canto 33. The ineffability of the experience is underscored in lines 55–57, wherein Dante reminds the reader that he is the poet living and writing in the physi-

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cal world and in the “present”—presumably about 1321 in Ravenna. He has been recounting, here and in the previous 99 cantos, a journey that took place over Easter weekend in the year 1300 and so must recall those events to memory before he can narrate them. The actual vision of God, however, is beyond language, as it is beyond memory. The passionate excitement and joy and love of that moment of ecstasy remain, though he is unable to call them to mind clearly enough to describe it. For this he needs God’s inspiration, and his final invocation in the poem is directly to God himself (without appeal to Apollo or the Muses) in line 67. His words here recall the opening of the Paradiso, in which he says he has seen . . . things that he who from that height descends, forgets or can not speak; for nearing its desired end, our intellect sinks into an abyss so deep that memory fails to follow it. (Paradiso 1, ll. 5–9)

Still Dante must attempt to approach the experience through language, inadequate though that may be. He first describes the insight (James’s “noetic” aspect) concerning the unity of the creation that he perceives in gazing into God’s light. The image of the book is at once most appropriate and lucid. For Dante, the creator of this great book of the Comedy, to see the universe itself as a great book in the Creator’s mind invites a comparison of God to the poet, and of the Comedy to the universal creation. But, as Dante continues, that essential unity in God’s mind is strewn through the various levels of the universe, like the scattered leaves of the book, and thus the universal harmony manifests itself in multiplicity in the physical world. The poet continues by borrowing from Scholastic philosophy the concepts of substance and accident: The term substance refers to a material thing that has existence in itself; accident refers to a quality that exists only as it pertains to a substance. God, perfect in himself, contains all things, whether substance or accident, or the relation of the two, fused together in an undifferentiated unity in his mind.

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As the pilgrim’s vision changes the deeper he looks into God’s light, the light itself seems to change, giving the pilgrim a new insight into the triune nature of God. Dante initially eschews any anthropomorphic attempt to personalize the deity but instead describes seeing three great circles of different colors, but occupying the same space. This is impossible in human understanding, as is the union of the three persons of the Trinity, but as the pilgrim witnesses the sight, it is perfectly true and fitting for God. The pilgrim focuses on the second circle—the circle denoting the second person of the Trinity, the Son—and, gazing hard at it, now makes out a human image (l. 131). Thus Dante’s final vision of God, the final image of the Comedy, is this revelation of the Incarnation of Christ. Dante focuses all his powers on this vision but says he is like a geometrician trying to square the circle—he cannot solve the mystery of how God and man can be united in the same being. Suddenly in an instant of grace that is completely beyond the pilgrim’s control (James’s “passivity”) the pilgrim receives direct understanding of this mystery. That understanding, of course, cannot be expressed nor recalled to memory by the older Dante writing in Ravenna in 1321. Like the vision itself, that flash of understanding was transient (James’s last characteristic); nor can the earthbound Dante revisit that vision. It must be left until his return to the Mystic Rose and his eternal salvation. The 33rd canto, the Paradiso itself, and the entire Comedy conclude as the pilgrim’s intellectual desire and will (the “vision” and “love” that have so often been the subjects of this canticle) move briefly in perfect accord with the love of God as it turns the heavenly spheres. The final line, describing “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars” (Canto 33, l. 145), alludes unmistakably to the very first line of the Paradiso, evoking “The glory of the One Who moves all things” (Paradiso 1, l. 1), thus moving the Paradiso full circle, creating a form like the heavenly spheres themselves, or like one of the three circles that symbolize the Trinity in this canto. At the same time the final word of the Paradiso—stars—is the same word that ends both the Inferno and the Purgatorio, thereby unifying all three canticles like the three circles of the Trinity,

or like the single volume in God’s mind that unifies all the scattered leaves of the created universe. The Comedy ends on a quiet note of joy remembered—as the older, experienced Dante looks back over two decades at his ecstatic (imagined) vision— and of joy anticipated—as Dante looks forward to his promised return to the Empyrean Heaven, now having recognized his sin in the Inferno, made satisfaction in the Purgatorio, and gone on to holy living in the Paradiso. The Comedy concluded, the pilgrim will have to return to earth. But only temporarily.

FURTHER READING Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 3 vols. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947–1948. Available online. URL: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ aquinas/summa.html. Accessed 24 July 2006. Barolini, Teodolinda. Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the “Comedy.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. Bergin, Thomas G. Perspectives on the Divine Comedy. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1967. Bloom, Harold, ed. Dante’s Divine Comedy. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Botterill, Steven. Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the “Commedia.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Boyde, Patrick. Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante’s “Comedy.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. De Gennaro, Angelo A. The Reader’s Companion to Dante’s Divine Comedy. New York: Philosophical Library, 1986. Durling, Robert M., ed. and trans. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 1, Inferno. Introduction and notes by Ronald L. Marinez and Robert M. Durling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. ———, ed. and trans. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 2, Purgatorio. Introduction and notes by Ronald L. Marinez and Robert M. Durling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Foster, Kenelm. The Two Dantes and Other Studies. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1977. Freccero, John. “Introduction to Inferno.” In The Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel

Il convivio Jacoff, 172–191. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Gallagher, Joseph. A Modern Reader’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Foreword by John Freccero. Liguori, Mo.: Triumph Books, 1999. Grandgent, C. H., commentary. Companion to the Divine Comedy. Edited by Charles S. Singleton. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975. Hollander, Jean, and Robert Hollander, trans. Inferno. Introduction and notes by Robert Hollander. New York: Random House, 2000. Hollander, Jean, Robert Hollander, trans. Purgatorio. Introduction and notes by Robert Hollander. New York: Random House, 2003. Jacoff, Rachel. “ ‘Shadowy Prefaces’: An Introduction to Paradiso.” In The Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 208–225. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Kleiner, John. Mismapping the Underworld: Daring and Error in Dante’s “Comedy.” Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994. Lansing, Richard H. From Image to Idea: A Study of the Simile in Dante’s “Commedia.” Ravenna: Longo, 1977. Mandelbaum, Allen, trans. The Divine Comedy. Introduction by Eugenio Montale and notes by Peter Armour. New York: Knopf, 1995. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the “Divine Comedy.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979. Musa, Mark, ed. and trans. The Divine Comedy. 3 vols. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1984–1986. ———, ed. and trans. Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy: Verse Translation and Commentary. Vol. 1, Inferno: Italian Text and Verse Translation; Vol. 2, Inferno: Commentary; Vol. 3, Purgatorio: Italian Text and Verse Translation; Vol. 4, Purgatorio: Commentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997–2000. Pinsky, Robert, trans. The Inferno of Dante. Foreword by John Frecarro and notes by Nocole Pinsky. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994. Quinones, Ricardo J. Dante Alighieri. Boston: Twayne, 1979. Raffa, Guy P. Divine Dialectic: Dante’s Incarnational Poetry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

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Robey, David. Sound and Structure in the “Divine Comedy.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Schnapp, Jeffrey T. “Introduction to Purgatorio.” In The Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 192–207. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante’s “Paradise.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Scott, John A. Understanding Dante. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Singleton, Charles S. Journey to Beatrice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Il convivio (The Banquet) (ca. 1304–1306) Dante’s first major literary undertaking after his exile from FLORENCE (FIRENZE), the Convivio is a long, unfinished work in Italian, intended to introduce philosophy to readers unable to understand the Latin of the philosophers themselves. After an introductory book Dante adds three more, and each of these books begins with one of Dante’s canzoni. While the poems introduce the intellectual concepts to be considered, the prose commentaries that follow interpret the poems and expand on the philosophical ideas. The whole work is conceived of metaphorically as a convivio, or banquet, with each book as a separate course in the meal of which the poem provides the meat while the commentary acts as the bread. The first book indicates that Dante had planned a total of 14 additional books or “courses,” but he was only able to complete four books before deciding to abandon the project, perhaps to devote himself more fully to the COMEDY (though he must also have been working on DE MONARCHIA immediately after giving up the Convivio). It is likely that each of the Convivio’s last 11 books was to be devoted to one of the moral or active virtues as enumerated by ARISTOTLE. This is made apparent by Dante’s promise, in Chapter 12 of Book 1, that his 14th book would deal with the virtue of justice. The Convivio relates directly to Dante’s earlier VITA NUOVA (1295). In that text Dante describes

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how, after the death of Beatrice, he turned his love toward another “gentle lady,” who consoled him in his grief. But in the Convivio Dante asserts that this lady was an allegorical representation of philosophy. Thus the canzoni that introduce the final three books of the extant Convivio all appear to be traditional love poems, but in his commentary Dante approaches them allegorically. In this he seems to owe something to ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS’s sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy, in which the imprisoned narrator receives a visit from the personified Lady Philosophy, who consoles him in his sorrow. In the same way Dante represents Lady Philosophy consoling him in his grief over the death of Beatrice. Boethius’s text is structured (as is the Vita nuova) in alternating passages of verse and prose and so in that way may have served as something of a structural model for the Convivio as well. In addition to Boethius Aristotle and MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO serve as major sources for Dante’s philosophical ideas. The Convivio begins with an introductory book in 13 chapters explaining why Dante believes a book like the Convivio is needed, and why he is writing it in the vernacular Italian—a language he argues is perfectly suitable for the discussion of moral and philosophical concepts. So passionate was he about the use of Italian that even as he was working on the Convivio, he seems to have begun writing DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA, a work devoted exclusively to a defense of the vernacular as a vehicle for literary expression. In his second book, Dante begins with his CANZONE Voi che ‘ntendendo (“You who through intelligence move the third sphere”) and in 15 chapters talks about ALLEGORY as he praises Lady Philosophy, touching upon other issues including astronomy, angels, and the immortality of the soul—all topics he would revisit in the Comedy, particularly in the PARADISO. Book 3 provides a 15-chapter commentary on the canzone Amor, che ne la lente (“Love, that speaks to me within my mind”), which focuses chiefly on the beauty and perfection of philosophy and the joy of intellectual activity. The final extant book of the treatise is the longest. Dante devotes some 30 chapters to a discussion of society and ethics, all as part of a com-

mentary on his canzone Le dolci rime d’amor (“The tender rhymes of love”). He focuses particularly on the concept of true nobility (an idea he found was of interest to Boethius, Cicero, and Virgil as well), and on the political justification for the Roman Empire. He would further deal with this topic at some length in De monarchia, a treatise he would go on to finish after abandoning the Convivio. While Dante scholars generally find the Convivio to be Dante’s most significant work between the Vita nuova and the Comedy, the reasons for Dante’s leaving the text unfinished are somewhat obscure. The completed work would have been of enormous length, judging from the first four books—and the 30 chapters of Book 4 may have caused Dante to reconsider whether he wanted to spend his time on his prose philosophical text or on his epic-length poetic Comedy. In the end his emulation of Virgil seems to have won out, pressing him to write a poem in the vernacular to rival Virgil’s Latin epic. Furthermore Dante seems to have become distracted by some of the themes he touched on in the Convivio and was tempted to begin new works—De vulgari eloquentia and De monarchia—inspired by ideas initially put forward in the Convivio. These, too, contributed to his abandoning the earlier work. In any case Dante seems to have wanted to revisit the meaning of Beatrice for his life, rather than exploring philosophy, the “gentle lady” who had replaced her in his thoughts. Thus in the Comedy he returns to Beatrice as his central figure and even at times seems to reject his work in the Convivio. In Purgatorio 2, for instance, CATO OF UTICA berates Dante and the other souls on the shore for wasting time listening to CASELLA perform the canzone Amor, che ne la lente from Book 3 of the Convivio. Later Beatrice corrects Dante’s mistaken opinions about the spots on the Moon (Paradiso 2) and about the angelic hierarchy (Paradiso 27), both of which had been expressed earlier in the Convivio. Despite its unfinished state the Convivio seems to have been relatively popular in the later Middle Ages. There are 30 surviving manuscripts of the text, six of which were produced in the 14th century. An early printed version of the text was published in Florence in 1490. Three more printed editions were subsequently produced in Venice.

Il convivio While in the past English readers may have had difficulty finding a complete translation of the text, two good translations—one by Christopher Ryan and one by Richard Lansing—have appeared in recent years. Citations in my text are to Lansing’s edition.

BOOK 1 Synopsis Dante begins his treatise by quoting Aristotle’s proposition that all men by nature desire knowledge. Some, he says, are unable to achieve this goal through defects in either the body (physical handicaps like deafness, for example) or the soul (being sidetracked by lesser pleasures, for instance). Others may be prevented by external forces, such as the distractions of a busy life, or the fact that one is born in a place without a university or an educated populace. Moved by a generous spirit typical of those who have attained some knowledge, Dante proposes to take the crumbs of learning he has gathered from the foot of wisdom’s table and to pass them along to those less fortunate, who have been prevented from achieving knowledge in the ways he has described. He will, he says, provide a banquet consisting of meat (his 14 canzoni that will begin each book) and bread (his prose commentaries on the poems, which will explain the poems’ treatment of love and virtue). He ends the introductory chapter by entitling his treatise The Banquet and by noting that his commentary on his poetry will be more mature here than in the Vita nuova. Still, he says, he does not disdain his earlier work, because different attitudes and manners are appropriate at different stages of one’s life. Continuing the banquet metaphor in the second chapter, Dante says that at the beginning of a banquet, the servants typically cleanse the bread of impurities. He sets out, therefore, to cleanse the “bread” of his commentary of any impurities it may contain. One such impurity, he says, is the rhetorical error of speaking about himself. Generally this should be avoided, he concedes, but he suggests that sometimes it is necessary to do so: Boethius, for example, speaks of himself in his Consolation of Philosophy in order to clear his reputation and avoid the greater evil of infamy. SAINT AUGUSTINE OF

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HIPPO spoke of himself in his Confessions in order to make available to his readers the greater good of instruction through his example. These, he says, are his own motives: He writes first in order to instruct, and second to prevent the infamy that his passionate love poems might subject him to among those who cannot understand their allegory. Dante continues his discussion of reputation in the third chapter. He does not want his commentary on his poems to open him to worse censure, he says, and then discusses why this could be a possibility. He has been exiled from the “sweet bosom” of his home city of Florence, where he fervently hopes to be able to return and live out his last days. But in his wanderings he has found that the fame resulting from his exile has given people an exaggerated view of his defects. This is because a widespread reputation exaggerates both good and bad characteristics in people’s minds. As fame exaggerates one’s qualities, familiarity diminishes them, Dante continues (Chapter 4). There are three reasons for this: First, most people are immature and judge solely by their senses and so fail to see beyond the surface. Second, some people out of envy defame others. Third all human beings have faults; thus the more intimate one is with others, the more they see one’s shortcomings. Since in his wanderings Dante has made himself familiar with nearly everyone in Italy, many may think ill of him. For these reasons, he says, he has written his text in a lofty style, in order to give it more weight. In Chapter 5, continuing the metaphor of the bread, Dante now declares he must apologize for its substance as well as its impurities. It is made of oats rather than wheat, he says, because it is written in Italian rather than Latin. Indicating that he soon intends to write a treatise on De vulgari eloquentia (Eloquence in the vernacular), he proceeds to contradict the chief point that he ultimately argued in that treatise by proclaiming Latin to be a language far superior to Italian because of the latter’s changeability and Latin’s ability to express ideas in a superior way. Accordingly he indicates that his first reason for using Italian in his commentary is that it is appropriate. Since the commentary is meant to serve the poetry and the poetry is Italian,

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it would not be appropriate for the servant to be superior to that which it serves, as the language of a Latin commentary would be to Italian poetry. Continuing the metaphor of master and servant, Dante states that a good servant must understand his master and argues in Chapter 6 that Latin does not understand the vernacular, or the friends (that is, speakers) of the vernacular. This is because far fewer people are familiar with Latin than with the vernacular. Further a good servant should be obedient, but Dante says in Chapter 7 that Latin would not have been truly obedient to the vernacular of Dante’s canzoni. Such obedience would not be agreeable, because of Latin’s clear superiority to the vernacular. In addition Latin could not help but be self-willed rather than obedient to the vernacular, since it would explain many things that would go beyond what the vernacular poems demanded. Finally Latin would both fail to fulfill the command of the vernacular (by communicating with only the learned among the vernacular population) and exceed the command of the vernacular (by communicating to readers among the Germans, the English, and others). The latter would be a particular problem because the beauty of the poetry’s language could not be conveyed along with its meaning. Poetry, Dante says, cannot be translated without a loss of beauty and harmony. In Chapter 8 Dante begins to argue that his choice of the vernacular for his treatise was motivated by complete generosity. He then proceeds to argue that complete generosity has three characteristics: First, it should be a gift to many rather than to few. Second, it should be useful (and this, Dante says, means that it should be done cheerfully, should be made more valuable by being given, should nourish friendship, and should be given without compulsion). Third, the gift should be unasked, because that makes its giving an act of generosity rather than commerce. Applying these criteria in Chapter 9, Dante argues that a Latin commentary would not have served many but only the learned few. Nor would Latin have been particularly useful. Since Dante’s purpose is to lead readers to knowledge and virtue through commentary on his canzoni, Latin would not be useful

since most of those he is trying to reach know only Italian. Finally, a commentary in the vernacular is something that no one has asked for before, whereas many have asked for, and received, commentaries in Latin on a variety of subjects. Therefore Dante has chosen to write in Italian out of pure generosity. In Chapter 10 Dante says that in addition to the appropriateness of the vernacular and his own generosity, the other reason for his use of Italian in his commentary was his love of his native language. Love moves the lover to magnify the beloved, as Dante does by using Italian to express true virtue. Love also causes the lover to be jealous of his beloved. Dante suggests that had he written the commentary in Latin, someone—probably someone far less competent—would have translated it into Italian; therefore Dante has rendered the text in Italian himself, trusting no one else to do it. Finally, the true lover seeks to defend his beloved. Dante was moved, he says, to defend the Italian vernacular against other languages that some claimed were superior, by demonstrating the ability of Italian to express complex ideas. In the long 11th chapter Dante condemns Italians who disparage their own vernacular in favor of some other language, such as Provençal. Such men do so from one of five causes. First, they may lack discernment and therefore are swayed by popular opinion, which holds Italian to be inferior to other languages. The second cause may be disingenuousness, and people in this group consist mainly of writers who, in order to excuse their own lack of skill, blame the language they write in and praise another in which they have not been required to write. The third reason is a vain desire for glory, and those in this camp mistakenly believe they will be more admired if they write in a language not their own. A fourth group is motivated by envy. Some may envy the accomplishments of a writer in the vernacular but attack the language in which he writes rather than the work itself in order to find fault with the writer. Finally, some condemn the vernacular out of baseness of mind. Just as a pretentious person thinks all he has is greater than it really is, so the base person thinks everything he owns, including his language, is less valuable than it is.

Il convivio As he moves toward the end of his first book, Dante examines the causes of his own love for his native language. Alluding to Cicero, he declares in Chapter 12 that love is caused by nearness and goodness. One’s own native tongue is not only intrinsically closest to him of all languages, but also (as Dante puts it, using the Scholastic term for something nonessential to the nature of something) accidentally closer to him, since it is the language of the people to whom he is closest. As for goodness Dante argues that goodness in anything is that which is most proper to that thing, as, he says, justice is most proper to human nature, and therefore its greatest good. In a short digression he promises to discuss this point in the 14th book of the present treatise. He then asserts that apt expression is the quality most proper to language, and that he has already shown that Italian possesses that quality and hence displays the goodness that generates love. In Chapter 13 Dante demonstrates the three causes (benefit, purpose, and familiarity) that serve to intensify his love for his own language. There are two kinds of benefits, Dante says: that which causes one to exist and that which causes one to be good. Since Italian is the language that drew his parents together, it has given Dante the benefit of existence. It is also the language that led him into knowledge, the ultimate goodness, and so benefited him in that way as well. As for purpose Dante argues that the natural purpose of language is to preserve itself, as it can do only by gaining stability. Stability can be achieved through meter and rhyme. Since the production of such verse has also been Dante’s purpose, then his purpose has been the same as the vernacular’s. Finally, his knowledge of the vernacular and continual practice of it since early childhood have made him very familiar with it. Thus, for all these reasons his love for his native language has grown. Closing Book 1 by returning to his banquet metaphor, Dante proclaims that he has now cleansed all impurities from his bread and prepares to serve the meat (his poems). Thousands, he says, will be fed with his barley breads, filling up many baskets (alluding to Christ’s feeding of the 5,000 in John 6). In another allusion, to Isaiah

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9.2, he says a new light shall rise and shine on those in the darkness. Commentary For contemporary readers a 13-chapter introduction to a treatise on philosophy, particularly an introduction that provides a lengthy justification for the writer’s self-references and for his writing the tract in Italian rather than Latin, may seem trivial and tedious or even superfluous. But, it must be remembered, in his time Dante’s use of the vernacular for such a serious intellectual prose work was unheard of and required justification. As for the self-referential aspect of the text, Dante is correct in citing the rhetorical principle discouraging such personal references, but he has good reason to be concerned about his reputation and so follows the example of Boethius in the Consolation of Philosophy and writes in order to defend himself from detractors. The precise nature of the criticism leveled at Dante is difficult to assess, since he argues mainly from general principles (in the manner of contemporary Scholastic philosophers) rather than inductively, from concrete experiences. But his reception throughout Italy during the first years of his exile seems to have inspired Dante’s concern, which he deals with in Chapters 2 through 4 of Book 1. In the first place it may have been that people who knew his reputation as a young love poet would find that reputation incongruous when they met, for the first time, a mature Dante approaching the age of 40. Consciously playing his Convivio off against his Vita nuova, Dante seeks to transcend that earlier work—not to disavow it, since it is valuable in its own right, but to put it behind him as a text appropriate for his younger self, one that must now be replaced by his more mature and serious concerns. Thus the form of the Convivio—in which a poem is followed by a lengthy commentary—recalls the form of the Vita nuova. In addition concerned with the charge (based on the Vita nuova) that he had carried on an amorous affair with a “gentle lady” after the death of Beatrice, Dante chooses canzoni specifically associated with that alleged love affair as the main texts on which his philosophical treatise will be based. His claim is that the lady he loved was not a flesh-and-blood woman but rather the allegorical personification of philosophy.

254 Il convivio Another more serious blow to Dante’s reputation was no doubt his exile from Florence and the danger that people he met would believe the charges of graft brought against him. On March 10, 1302, he had been condemned to death if he ever returned to Florence. Such a sentence must have carried with it the added indignity that everyone he met might be wondering whether Dante deserved such a condemnation. It must be his task in the Convivio, therefore, not only to speak abstractly about ethical principles, but also to demonstrate, through his poetry, that he himself is motivated only by virtue, not by lust, as his earlier poems might suggest, or greed, as his death sentence might imply. Dante’s concern with his reputation throughout Italy was quite real. That concern extended, in these early years, to his reputation in Florence as well. One of the more remarkable aspects of this first book of the Convivio is the lack of invective directed toward Dante’s native city. By the time he set to work on the Convivio, it seems Dante had abandoned his association with fellow White exiles and their unrealistic plans to retake Florence by force. It is likely that Dante, dissociated from true enemies of the Florentine state, thought that the establishment (through his Convivio) of his reputation as a serious intellectual known as an authority on moral virtue might make the Black authorities relent and rescind his banishment. As a motive for writing the Convivio, that wish to return to home and family comes through poignantly in Dante’s evocation of the “sweet bosom” of Florence in Chapter 3. Not until all hopes of such a return are abandoned does Dante attack Florence as a corrupt nest of wickedness in the CACCIAGUIDA cantos at the center of the Paradiso. The Convivio begins with a quotation from Aristotle’s Metaphysics I.1.980—one that Dante would use again at the beginning of De monarchia. The passage introduces the desire to know as a basic aspect of human nature. It was a theme Dante was to return to again, not only in De monarchia but in the Comedy as well. In PURGATORIO 21, ll.1–4, he equates this thirst for knowledge with the spiritual thirst displayed by the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.5–15. Later, in the highest sphere of

Paradise, Beatrice asks the souls of the blest who feast at the marriage supper of the lamb to give the pilgrim Dante a foretaste of “what falls from the table of the Blest” (Canto 24, l. 5), in consideration of his “immeasurable thirst” (l. 7). For Dante this natural desire for knowledge is a craving for heavenly understanding. Using the metaphor of the heavenly feast that he was to repeat in the Paradiso, Dante constructs his whole treatise around the metaphor of his poetry as meat, his commentary as bread, and knowledge the crumbs he has himself gathered from the foot of the heavenly table. With uncharacteristic modesty Dante presents himself as not taking part in the feast himself, but rather collecting the crumbs left by others. Dante is a layman and largely self-educated. He is thus an amateur philosopher, not one, like ALBERTUS MAGNUS or SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, who has studied at the university and debated Aristotle in Latin. These indeed have seats at the feast. But Dante has read enough, eaten of the crumbs of philosophy, to understand and to pass along what he has learned to readers familiar only with the vernacular. Thus his motive in writing this treatise is, to a large extent, democratic: All men desire knowledge, but since some are unable to learn Latin because of their involvement in the world—political leaders or busy merchants, for instance—Dante takes what may have been seen as the private province of Scholastic philosophers and gives it to all men. Precisely what that knowledge consists of is made clear in the opening sentence of the book: The citation of Aristotle clearly announces that the impetus for Dante’s interest in philosophy is not the Christianized Neoplatonism that had been standard in the West in the early Christian centuries, but rather the more recent and controversial Aristotelianism that had been introduced into Western Europe in the previous century through Muslim commentators like AVERROËS. This was a more scientific and logical worldview but had been condemned at the University of Paris in the mid13th century. However, Aquinas had succeeded, in Dante’s own lifetime, in reconciling Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology, at least in a way that the church finally accepted. To the average

Il convivio layman, though, such arguments were unknown, at least until Dante could popularize them. Dante’s means of popularizing these ideas is, of course, his use of the vernacular, and he devotes the last nine chapters of his first book to a spirited defense of his choice to write in Italian. In this he is closest to the theme of the other significant incomplete text of his early years of exile, De vulgari eloquentia. As in that treatise Dante here argues that the vernacular is a legitimate vehicle for serious intellectual discourse. But a major difference in the two texts is that here Dante accepts the commonplace medieval notion that Latin was a language superior to all vernaculars, while in De vulgari eloquentia much more radically, he argues the reverse. In the later De vulgari Dante asserts that Latin as it is used in his time is an artificial construct while the vernacular is a living language and therefore superior. In the earlier Convivio, however, Dante argues the natural superiority of Latin through a master-servant metaphor that is not one of Dante’s happier images. In Chapters 6 and 7 Dante argues awkwardly that Latin cannot “understand” the vernacular and cannot be “obedient” to it, because of this natural intellectual preeminence. More concretely and perhaps more convincingly, Dante finds the unchanging nature of Latin valuable because it lends a kind of permanence to whatever is expressed, whereas the vernacular language varies too much across time and space. Still he believes that art can bestow its own permanence on the language used to create it, as he argues in Chapter 13. Remarkably it is his own poems that he chooses to put forward as examples of that kind of art. Thus rather than providing his readers with a vernacular commentary on Aristotle, thereby paralleling the Arabic or Latin commentaries already in existence among the philosophers, or rather even than providing a commentary on the work of Virgil or OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO), the accepted Latin classics that would normally be considered worthy of such a commentary if one were to decide that poetry was serious enough matter to warrant the kind of commentary normally reserved for philosophical treatises, Dante actually provides his own vernacular verse—and love verse at that—as

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matter worthy of serious commentary. There is something very bold in the conception of this text, despite the appearance of humility that characterizes the first book. Dante, to use his own banquet metaphor, provides both the meat and the bread for this intellectual feast. That boldness is explicit in the last section of Book 1, where the banquet metaphor borrows from the biblical story of the loaves and fishes. Here Dante actually equates his task with Christ’s own miracle in John 6: His bread, he says, will satisfy the hunger for knowledge of many thousands. His allusion to Isaiah 9 further suggests a parallel with the Messiah, who gives light (in Dante’s case, representing knowledge) to the people who sit in darkness.

CANZONE 1 Synopsis The first canzone of the Convivio, which provides the material for the commentary of Book 2, is the poem Voi, che ’ntendo il terzi ciel movete (“You whose intellect the third sphere moves”). It is a poem comprising four stanzas of 13 hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) lines rhyming a b c b a c c d e e d f f, concluded by a nine-line envoy rhyming a b c b a c c d d. In the first stanza Dante addresses the angelic Intelligences whose task it is to govern the movement of the third heavenly sphere, the sphere of Venus (the planet associated with the classical goddess of love). It is the power of this sphere (i.e., the power of love) that moves him; therefore, these Intelligences are the only appropriate audience for his words. He begs them to listen to him as he tells about the sorrow in his heart and about the contrasting spirit that comes to him from Venus’s sphere. Once, he says in stanza 2, a thought from his heart would find its way to Heaven, where it would see his lady (i.e., the dead Beatrice) in glory and would return to him with news of her that made his heart desire to travel to that realm to be with her. Now, though, another thought has chased the first away, making him look upon another lady and whispering that true bliss may be found in that lady’s eyes. In stanza 3 Dante describes an allegorical battle in his heart, wherein the humble thought of Beatrice

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is slain by its enemy, the new thought. His soul cries out at the loss of the earlier thought, which so often had consoled him in his grief. The soul then laments the fact that the speaker’s eyes had been looked upon by the new lady’s eyes, and the speaker bewails this gaze, which will prove to be his death. But in stanza 4 a new spirit of love appears to him and tells the speaker that he will not die. The power of the new lady has frightened him, but she is possessed of all courtly virtues, and he should therefore make her his new lady. Such miracles will occur if he accepts the gentle lady as his love that he will be inspired to say to love, “Behold your handmaid.” In the final envoy Dante addresses the poem itself, saying that it is so complex that few will really understand it. If it happens that it is sung before an uncomprehending audience, Dante advises the canzone to ask them at least to admire how beautiful the song is. Commentary In Canto 8 of the Paradiso the soul of CHARLES MARTEL quotes the first line of this poem to the pilgrim Dante in the sphere of Venus (l. 37). Since Charles Martel had visited Florence in 1294, it is assumed he would have become familiar with the poem at that time. Thus this first canzone is a poem probably written a good 10 years prior to the Convivio, during the time described in the Vita nuova when Dante turned to the “gentle lady” at the window for consolation upon Beatrice’s death. It describes a time when, at least temporarily, he allowed himself to experience this new love. The poem is written very much in the style of GUIDO CAVALCANTI: Like Guido’s poetry, it employs learned philosophical imagery, using the notion of Intelligences that guide the heavenly spheres. As in Cavalcanti love is seen primarily as a negative thing (at least until the final stanza), causing the speaker fear and distress. Further, as in Cavalcanti, the description of love is psychological—stanza 3 of Dante’s poem occurs strictly in the speaker’s mind, as one thought battles another one, and the soul laments what the eyes have seen. The emphasis on the speaker’s psychology allows Dante to employ another common feature of Cavalcanti’s poetry, the doctrine of the “spirits.” From

contemporary medical treatises Cavalcanti had borrowed the concept of spirits manufactured in the psyche that are essentially products of the mind but can be sent forth into the world and return to the sender. The “thoughts” of this poem are such spirits, and the reference in the second stanza to the thought that one would visit Heaven and take back news of the speaker’s lady is a direct reference to the final SONNET of the Vita nuova, Oltre la spera che più larga gira (“Beyond the sphere that makes the widest round”), in which a spirit, released as a sigh from the grieving lover, travels to Paradise and takes back news in words the speaker cannot understand—he can only make out the name Beatrice. Clearly this canzone was written after that sonnet. In this poem there are three such spirits: the one who still tells the speaker of Beatrice, the enemy spirit who drives out that first one and forces the speaker’s mind to focus on the new noble lady, and a third more gentle spirit of love who appears in the fourth stanza to convince him to accept the new lady as his beloved. A final aspect of Cavalcanti’s poetic treatment of love is his notion of exclusivity: One must be truly noble and refined in spirit, something of a superior being, truly to love and truly to understand love (thus the learned language served to prevent the unlearned, and therefore inferior, beings from understanding the nature of love). Thus the conclusion of Dante’s canzone, wherein he suggests that there will be many who do not understand his poem, recalls the conclusion of Cavalcanti’s most famous canzone, “Donna me prega” (“A Lady Asks Me”), in which, after defining love in difficult Scholastic terms, he tells the lady that she should now know enough to speak of love to those with understanding—and that she should have no desire to be with others. One last point worth noting is the conclusion of stanza 4 of Dante’s poem, where the spirit of love suggests that the new lady will please the speaker so much that he will want to say to the personified god of love, “Behold your handmaid: Do as you please” (l. 52). This direct allusion to Mary’s response to the announcement of the Incarnation in Luke 1.38—“Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the

Il convivio servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word’ ”—is a bit of near-blasphemy not unlike GUIDO GUINIZELLI’s mistaking his lady for an angel in his poem Al cor gentil (“The Gentle Heart”). Thus like the doctrine of the spirits the religious imagery is characteristic of the DOLCE STIL NOVO school of poetry epitomized by Cavalcanti. Here the point seems to be that the new lady’s love is a miracle that will save the speaker and give him new life—even as Christ’s incarnation saved and gave new life to all humanity.

BOOK 2 Synopsis The second book opens with Dante’s assertion that he must now show how his first course should be eaten—that is, how the reader should approach his poem. He says that an interpretation can be both literal and allegorical and goes on to delineate the four senses according to which a text can be read. The first of these is literal, that is, the surface meaning. Beneath that, he says, is the allegorical, the truth behind the fiction. Theologians take this sense differently from poets, Dante says, but since he is discussing poetry he will speak in the manner of the poets. The third sense is the moral, the meaning one takes away from the reading for one’s own profit. The fourth sense is anagogical—what the text signifies with regard to eternal glory. Dante stresses at the end of the first chapter that as the material of anything must precede its form, or the foundation before the structure, so the literal sense must be determined before one attempts to understand any of the other senses. In Chapter 2 Dante summarizes the literal sense of the canzone, Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete. After Beatrice’s death the sphere of Venus had revolved twice before the gentle lady (mentioned at the end of his Vita nuova) appeared to him and stayed on his mind. He was moved by her pity for him and inclined to love her, though before that love could take root there was a great struggle in his mind with the older love of Beatrice. Tormented by this inner struggle, he says, he felt compelled to cry out in the first words of this poem. Dante ends the chapter with a brief discussion of the structure of the canzone, similar to those he included in the

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Vita nuova. The poem is in three parts, he says. The first stanza, in which the Intelligences or angels are asked to listen to the poem, is the first division of the canzone. The second division comprises the second through fourth stanzas, which describe the poet’s inner turmoil. The third part is the fifth stanza, which is addressed to the poem itself. Dante will deal with each part in turn. In the third chapter Dante begins to explore in more detail the literal meaning of his first stanza, beginning with a discussion of his reference to the “third heaven.” Aristotle, he says, was mistaken in his assertion that there were eight heavenly spheres, the last being the sphere of the fixed stars. Ptolemy corrected this error by positing a ninth sphere that acted as the first mover, the Primum Mobile. Aristotle also erred in assuming that the Sun occupied the second sphere from Earth, after the Moon. The true order places the sphere of the Moon first, Mercury second, Venus third, the Sun fourth, Mars fifth, Jupiter sixth, Saturn seventh, the fixed stars eighth, and the Primum Mobile ninth, with the Empyrean Heaven—home of the blessed souls— beyond the last sphere. The Primum Mobile is the swiftest turning sphere, since it makes the widest circle but must complete its motion—as must all the other spheres—in 24 hours. Each sphere has, as the Earth itself, two poles and an equator. Because the spheres move more swiftly (and therefore have more life) at the equator, Dante claims that stars nearer the equator are more filled with virtue than those near the poles. Finally, the spheres of the planets each contain a smaller sphere called an epicycle, and on the outer edge of this smaller sphere is attached the planet itself—in this case Venus. Having explained the third Heaven, Dante devotes the fourth chapter to a discussion of the movers of that sphere, the Intelligences to whom he addresses his poem. There have been many theories concerning these Intelligences, or angels, as many call them. Aristotle believed there were only as many such beings as there were spheres to move. PLATO believed in an Intelligence devoted to each species of created thing, and he called it an “idea.” The pagans believed that the Intelligences were gods and goddesses who caused various effects in the world. These beliefs, Dante claims, display a

258 Il convivio deficiency of reason. Reason alone perceives that there are far more angelic beings than there are perceived effects. Dante reasons that angelic beings must, as humans, engage in both an active and a contemplative life. Since the contemplative life is more godlike, it follows that God loves it more, and so more angels must engage in it than in the active life. Since we only perceive those Intelligences that are active, there must be many more that we do not perceive. Dante ends the chapter by affirming that we should admire these heavenly creatures: Although we cannot perceive them with our senses, Dante says, we have some hint of their existence in our minds. In Chapter 5 Dante states that a lack of instruction also led pagans to false conclusions about angels. We have instruction from God himself in the form of Christ. We know of the heavenly messenger who went to Mary. Christ spoke of legions of angels that could be sent by his Father. The church divides the angels into a hierarchy of three sets with three orders of angel in each. From lowest to highest these consist of Angels, Archangels, and Thrones; then Dominions, Virtues, and Principalities; and finally Powers, Cherubim, and Seraphim. The highest order of these contemplative beings gazes upon the power of the Father; the second order on the wisdom of the Son, and the third on the love of the Holy Spirit. Further each order contemplates its person in a different way, as the Seraphim contemplate the Father in himself as First Cause, the Cherubim contemplate him in relation to the Son, and the Powers his relation to the Holy Spirit. One-tenth of the angels were lost soon after their creation, and human beings were created to make up that number. Each of the nine spheres of Heaven is moved by one of the orders of angels, and the third sphere is assigned to the Thrones, who burn with the love of the Holy Spirit. That angelic love kindles love in the world below, and it was in recognition of that that pagans identified Venus as goddess of love. Each movement of the sphere—including the movement of the planet in its epicycle, the movement of the whole sphere in relation to the Sun, and the movement of the sphere in relation to the fixed stars—is governed by one of the Thrones. Thus there are at least

three Thrones; whether the daily movement of the sphere from east to west is caused by a Throne or by the Primum Mobile Dante does not venture to guess. These Thrones are those to whom Dante’s canzone is addressed. In Chapter 6 Dante completes his literal interpretation of the first part of the canzone. He asks the Thrones to listen to what is in his heart even though they have no sense perception, meaning that he asks them to understand with their intellect. When he speaks of his “heart,” he says, he refers to his inner thoughts. There are two reasons he says it is proper to speak to them: First, his condition is so strange that only they are likely to understand. Second, anyone who profits or receives a benefit or wrong from someone will speak of it first to the benefactor (to thank him) or to the malefactor (to move him to compassion). Since the movement of Venus has caused his current crisis, Dante addresses the Thrones. In order to persuade the Thrones to listen he promises to speak of new and momentous things and then speaks of the spirit that descends from their star. That “spirit,” he says, is the constant thought of the gentle lady, a thought from which his soul, held back by another thought—the memory of Beatrice—withholds its assent. He ends the chapter with a comment that the influence of Venus on our souls is remarkable given the fact that its distance from us is 167 times the distance to the center of Earth, which he estimates to be 3,250 miles. Now in the seventh chapter Dante begins speaking of the second part of the poem, which he subdivides into three sections corresponding to the three middle stanzas. In the first he speaks of the nature of the conflicting thoughts within him. Second, he considers the outlook of the old thought of Beatrice; third, he discusses the attitude of the new thought, that of the gentle lady. In the first stanza, Dante says, he uses the term life to refer to the actualization of the highest function of any being— for humans, this means reason. Thus the life of his heart consists of thoughts. His older thought was the one that dwelled on Beatrice’s place in Heaven, and it was so sweet as to make him desire death himself. The new thought, however, is so powerful that it takes control of his soul and turns his gaze

Il convivio toward the new lady, promising him that the sight of her eyes will be his salvation. In the eighth chapter Dante prepares to discuss the turmoil in his mind, beginning with the thought of Beatrice that is ultimately replaced in the poem. He will begin with this, he says, because it is more effective rhetorically to end with the most important item—in this case with the thought that proves victorious. First he notes that the Intelligences, whose influence incites love, are effective only with those within their power—that is, those in the world. Once Beatrice passed out of the world, she was no longer in love’s power. This remark causes Dante to digress about the afterlife. Dante expresses certain faith in the afterlife for several reasons: First, all authorities in every philosophy and rational religion agree that something in us is immortal. Second, human beings are superior to all other animals. No other animal expects an afterlife. Humans do, and if they are deceived, then they are in fact the most imperfect of animals, and that is impossible. Third, if nature put such a hope in our minds, which could lead some of us deliberately to shorten our earthly lives, then nature has worked against itself, and that is not possible. Fourth, our dreams reveal our immortality to us. And finally, we have the word of Jesus Christ that we are immortal, and that is always the truth. In Chapter 9 Dante returns to the discussion of his third stanza. The thought of Beatrice that had occupied his soul, contemplating her joy in Paradise, speaks in grief, shocked by the speaker’s sudden change. This thought focuses its lament on the speaker’s eyes. It curses the moment when the gentle lady looked into them: Only what enters the eyes in a straight line will enter directly into the imagination, and that is what has happened here. The thought also chastises the eyes for disobeying its command and looking upon the gentle lady, for the speaker’s soul knew that it was predisposed to receive the gentle lady’s charms. This presumption of the eyes has, in fact, endangered them, the thought of Beatrice contends. Dante moves on in Chapter 10 to speak of his fourth stanza, depicting the answer of the new and victorious thought. The stanza is in two parts, Dante says. The first reprimands the soul for cow-

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ardice, saying that it is not dead but only bewildered at having fallen in love with this new lady. The second part records the virtues of the new lady. The new thought is here called a “little spirit of love,” Dante says, to indicate his soul’s acceptance of it. The lady is compassionate, the little spirit says, and Dante notes that compassion is not simply an emotion like pity but a disposition of mind. The lady is also courteous, and Dante defines courtesy as dignity, virtue, and fine manners, which were formerly practiced in courts (though contemporary Italian courts practice only rudeness). The lady is also humble, wise, and magnificent. The thought finally convinces the soul to call the new love “lady.” With Chapter 11 Dante completes his literal interpretation of the canzone. He briefly analyzes the poem’s envoy, which he calls the third part of the poem. He uses the term tornada in discussing it, denoting the fact that he addresses his poem directly. He asserts, first, that in any discourse the goodness and beauty of the composition are separate, the goodness lying in the poem’s meaning and the beauty in its style. The beauty of this canzone was easy to see, Dante says, but its meaning was difficult. Second, it is sometimes effective to speak to people indirectly, as here Dante addresses his words to the poem and his meaning to his readers. Few will understand the poem well, because the speech is difficult and complex, but the reader should still consider the beauty of its composition, its order, and its rhythm. Now in Chapter 12 Dante finally turns from the literal interpretation of his poem to its allegorical and “true” meaning. While in the throes of his grief over Beatrice’s death, he says, he sought consolation in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (written to find comfort while Boethius was imprisoned), as well as in Cicero’s De amicitia (written to console Laelius upon the death of his friend Scipio). His reading not only gave him solace but also sparked in him a love of philosophy, so that after some 30 months of seeking out philosophy at schools and in disputations, Dante was so enamored of philosophy that it drove all other thoughts from his mind. The gentle lady of his poem, then, is the allegorical Lady Philosophy, whose virtue drew his thoughts from his first love.

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In the long 13th chapter Dante explains the allegory of the “third heaven” in his poem. The heavens in his poem denote the sciences, he says. As the heavenly spheres do, each science revolves around the subject that is its center, and each science illuminates its subject. Also, as the heavens are responsible for bringing about physical generation, what Dante calls the “first perfection,” the sciences are responsible for engendering our ability to contemplate the truth, which he calls the “second perfection.” The seven planetary spheres Dante equates with the seven liberal arts: Thus the Moon, Mercury, and Venus correspond to the trivium of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric; the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn correspond to the quadrivium of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. The sphere of the fixed stars parallels the advanced study of physics and metaphysics, and the Primum Mobile that of moral science. As for the unmoving and unchanging Empyrean Heaven, Dante relates it to the study of theology. Dante spends most of the chapter describing two properties of each planet that parallel properties of its respective science. In the case of the third sphere, Venus, for example, Dante says that Venus’s brightness makes its appearance sweeter than that of any other star, just as rhetoric is sweeter than any other science. Further, as Venus appears both in the morning and in the evening, so the rhetorician may speak directly to a listener (an immediate, morninglike experience) or may speak through writing (a delayed, eveninglike one). In Chapter 14 Dante completes his discourse on the relationship of the heavens to the sciences. The fixed stars are like both physics and metaphysics: There are, Dante says, 1,022 stars in the heavens, and for Dante these numbers signify three kinds of movement (the two symbolizing local movement, the 20 movement by alteration, the 1,000 movement by growth), and these three movements are studied in physics. The galaxy or Milky Way is believed to be a multitude of stars that we cannot see, and in this it is like metaphysics, which studies what cannot be seen. The pole that can be seen represents material things, studied in physics, while the pole we cannot see suggests metaphysics, which studies what cannot be seen. The daily revolution

of the stars from east to west suggests the corruptible things of the temporal world (the study of physics), while the gradual countermovement from west to east (of one degree per hundred years) represents metaphysics—because it will never be completed since, Dante says, we are now in the last age of the world. The Primum Mobile directs the daily movements of all other spheres and so is like moral philosophy. Without the Primum Mobile the universe would be in chaos, so without moral science there would be no happiness. As for the Empyrean Heaven, it remains peaceful and unchanging as the divine science of theology, in which there can be no diverse opinions because God himself is one and unchanging. In his 15th and final chapter Dante more specifically explores the allegorical meaning of his canzone. The third sphere, he has made clear, denotes the science of rhetoric, and the Intelligences to whom he refers are in fact Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Marcus Tullius Cicero, and others whose discourses helped to kindle his love for Lady Philosophy, who is the true “gentle lady” glorified in the poem. When in stanza 2 he refers to the lady’s eyes, he is referring to her philosophical demonstrations that, when perceived by the eyes of the intellect, stimulate its love for her. The “sighs of anguish” alluded to in the stanza signify the difficulties of hard study required to understand philosophy’s truths. For the third stanza Dante asserts a moral interpretation, asserting that one should not forsake a good friend because he finds a better one, but that if forced to make a choice he should keep to the better friend. Finally, in the fourth stanza Dante says that the “gentle spirit of love” alluded to is a thought springing from his philosophical study. The miracles to which he refers are wonders whose causes philosophy can reveal. He ends by asserting again that the “lady” of this amorous poem was no corporeal woman but Lady Philosophy herself, whom he calls the daughter of God. Commentary Certainly one of the most interesting aspects of the Convivio’s Book 2 is Dante’s commentary on allegory in the first chapter. The four levels of interpretation he discusses are the same as those he

Il convivio mentions in his “Letter to Can Grande” concerning the interpretation of his Comedy. These are levels that had become commonplace in the interpretation of Scripture. The literal level is, of course, the straightforward historical meaning of the words— or, in the case of a work of fiction created by a poet, the straightforward description of the plot. Both the Scripture and the poet’s fiction can also be read allegorically. In the scripture this may take the form of the typological prefiguring that occurs in relating the Old Testament to the New (as Jonah in the belly of the great fish, for example, prefigures Christ descending to the dead). For secular poetry this reading can involve other kinds of correspondences, as Dante explores by suggesting that the seven planets can stand for the seven liberal arts. The moral or tropological sense involves the application of the text to the moral life of human beings—a sense Dante illustrates with the rather quirky reading of the transfiguration scene in the Gospels, in which Christ chooses only SAINT PETER, SAINT JOHN THE APOSTLE, and SAINT JAMES THE APOSTLE to accompany him. Dante reads this morally as evidence that we should have few companions when we are involved in secret matters. The anagogical sense relates the text to what can be known about eternal glory, so that the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt denotes the soul’s departure from the prison of the body. Dante asserts that the literal sense must be understood first, but he refers to the allegorical sense as the “truth” that may hide below the “beautiful lie” of the fiction. In the case of his poems Dante is particularly concerned with defending his reputation from those who faulted him for deserting the memory of Beatrice for another woman. Though his canzoni suggest that is the case, these are in fact the beautiful fictions; the truth behind them, he claims, is his love of philosophy. Most of Book 2 (Chapters 2–11) provides a literal interpretation of the canzone. In it Dante describes how the thought of the gentle lady drove the thought of Beatrice from his mind. Since this description contradicts what Dante had written on the Vita nuova, where he presents himself as temporarily taking comfort from the gentle lady but then rejecting her to return to the memory of

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Beatrice, some have suggested that the Vita nuova had originally ended with the narrator’s relationship with the gentle lady, but that Dante revised his text around 1308, to make it better conform to his plans for the Comedy. But there is no real evidence for anything of this sort, and the discrepancy remains largely unexplained. Those troubled by the inconsistency may be thinking of the Vita nuova as straight autobiography rather than a fictionalized account designed for Dante’s own specific aesthetic purposes. In the Convivio he has very different goals. The chapters concerning the heavenly spheres and the angels are of general appeal to those readers with an interest in medieval notions of the cosmos. But they are also significant as background to the Comedy. While Aristotle had proposed eight spheres, Dante accepts Ptolemy’s plan of nine, comprising the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, and the Primum Mobile, the order that he uses for the structure of his Paradiso. In his view of angels Dante is more original. Thomas Aquinas, for example, had suggested in his Summa contra Gentiles that the Intelligences that moved the spheres were all of the angelic order of Virtues. Dante, on the other hand, assigns one of the nine orders of angels to each of the nine spheres. The hierarchy of angelic orders Dante employs here (Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Principalities, Powers, Cherubim, and Seraphim) follows SAINT GREGORY THE GREAT. In the Paradiso, however, Dante follows the order set forth by the Pseudo-Dionysius (Angels, Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim), essentially correcting his previous “error” in the Convivio (Paradiso 28, ll. 130–139). As for Dante’s assertion that the contemplative life is more valued by God than the active (prompting the assumption that there must be many more angels beyond those moving the spheres), this is in line with the superiority of Rachel to Leah in Dante’s dream in Canto 18 of the Purgatorio, or SAINT BENEDICT OF NURSIA’S position above Saint Augustine in the Mystic Rose in Canto 33 of the Paradiso.

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One of the more remarkable passages in Book 2 is the digression in Chapter 8 regarding the afterlife of the individual human soul. Inspired by his earlier thoughts of Beatrice in bliss, Dante is moved to consider human immortality in general, essentially justifying for himself and his readers his faith that Beatrice is indeed alive and with God. He argues that all writers and thinkers, whether philosophers, Jews, Muslims, pagan poets, or Tarars, assert that a part of us is immortal. In fact Dante knows this to be untrue. He was clearly familiar with the Averroist notion that the active intellect was the same force in all men, and the only part of the soul that was immortal—a doctrine that effectively denied the survival of individual personality. He was also aware of the Epicurean heresy popular in the Sicilian court of FREDERICK II OF SWABIA and subsequent generations, for he puts FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI and CAVALCANTE DEI CAVALCANTI in the circle of heretics in Inferno 10 for such beliefs. Further, as John A. Scott points out, Dante’s own “first friend” Guido Cavalcanti (the chief poetic inspiration for the Vita nuova) implies this same heresy in his influential canzone Donna me prega (Understanding Dante 119). Perhaps Dante meant that, while certain individuals denied the soul’s immortality, the overall preponderance of opinion at all times has been in favor of the afterlife. The energy he puts into his defense of the doctrine here suggests both his knowledge that there are some, even among those close to him (such as Guido), who had expressed doubts about immortality and his deep personal need to know that his beloved Beatrice was eternally with God. Chapters 12 through 15 of Book 2 finally develop the allegorical interpretation of Dante’s canzone. The identification of the comforting gentle lady with Lady Philosophy is a fairly natural correspondence, particularly considering the debt he acknowledges to Boethius. From this connection the identification of the angelic Intelligences with Cicero, Boethius, and other philosophers follows logically. There is even a certain similarity between the 10 heavenly spheres, through which one must pass one sphere at a time to reach the highest Heaven, and the 11 intellectual disciplines

that one must master one at a time before reaching the study of theology, the highest of sciences. But the explanation of how the heavenly spheres correspond to different intellectual disciplines seems strained and even ludicrous to a contemporary reader. In describing how the planet Jupiter is like geometry, for example, Dante asserts that as Jupiter is a temperate planet between the heat of Mars and the cold of Saturn, so geometry moves between the point and the circle (the point being the beginning of geometry and the circle, as the perfect figure, its end). If it is difficult to see the connection, consider the second parallel Dante draws: Jupiter, he says, is the whitest of all the planets, just as geometry is the whitest or purest of all the sciences because it is without error. Such are the imaginative leaps Dante makes to force his scheme of heavenly spheres to fit the hierarchy of sciences he enumerates. Further, Dante solves the problem of fitting 11 sciences into 10 spheres by including physics and metaphysics in the same sphere—that of the fixed stars—another imaginative stretch. Dante’s most important contention in this section on the sciences, however, is his insertion of the science of ethics or moral philosophy just below theology as the discipline associated with the Primum Mobile. In this Dante deviates from the order proposed by Thomas Aquinas and by Aristotle, both of whom place metaphysics higher than ethics in the hierarchy of sciences. For Dante, however, ethics was for human beings what the Primum Mobile was for the heavenly spheres. Without the Primum Mobile the universe would be in chaos. Without ethics all other sciences are meaningless and human society would be in chaos. Here is where Book 2 ends, concluding with an announcement of the theme of Book 3: the nobility of Lady Philosophy. But first Dante provides the text of his second canzone.

CANZONE 2 Synopsis The canzone that opens Book 3 is Amor, che ne la mente mi ragiona (“Love, that speaks to me within my mind”), a song in five long stanzas extolling the angelic qualities of the poet’s new gentle lady. In stanza 1 the personified god of love speaks within

Il convivio the poet, but his intellect is unable to understand. Nor is he able to speak of her in a way that would make sense of what love has told him. Thus, what he cannot understand or speak of must be left out when he does speak of her, as he does in this poem. If there is a problem with his verse, then, the blame must be placed on his own weak intellect, and on the Italian language itself, which lacks the ability to do his new love justice. In stanza 2 Dante says that the sun itself shines nowhere so noble as when it shines on his lady. The angels of Heaven appreciate her, and all earthly lovers are filled with admiration for her. God has given her a power beyond the limits of nature, so that she herself reveals what God is like, and she engenders sighs in all who see her. The third stanza continues in this vein: The lady is like an angel into whom some power of God descends. Any lady who doubts this need only walk with her and observe her movements. When the gentle lady speaks, a spirit of Heaven descends to tell us that her worth goes beyond normal humanity. What is beautiful in a woman is defined as whatever is most like her. In her we see a true miracle to strengthen our faith. In the fourth stanza Dante asserts that the lady’s face mirrors the joys of Paradise. In lines that recall the first stanza Dante says that her beauty overwhelms his intellect and makes it difficult for him to speak of it. But her beauty strikes us and shatters our vices. Let any woman whose humility is in question look at his lady, he says, for God made her as the embodiment of humility. Like the first canzone, this one ends with a tornada, in which Dante addresses his song. Referring to an earlier poem about this lady in which he complained of her haughtiness, he argues that such had been his perception at the time, but not the lady’s true character. At that time, he says, his soul was afraid. He tells the song to excuse itself for this reason when it enters the lady’s presence and to promise to sing her praises everywhere. Commentary This canzone has a particularly complex metrical form. It uses five 18-line stanzas rhyming a b b c a b b c c d e e d f d f g g. Lines are hendecasyllabic (11 syllables) except line 12 (precisely the two-thirds point of the stanza), which is only seven syllables. This

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structure has the effect of changing the direction of the stanza for the final six lines, much like the turn of thought between the octave and the sestet of a sonnet. In the second stanza, for example, the first 11 lines discuss what the sun, angels, love, and God himself think of the lady and give to her, while the final six lines focus on the effect that she has on those who see her on earth. The style of this poem is very much in the vein of Cavalcanti and the Dolce stil novo. Dante utilizes the learned imagery of astronomy and theology, including the idea of the Intelligences who reflect God’s power. In stanza 3 Dante also uses the learned notion of the gentle lady as the Platonic ideal against which all other women must be measured. The Cavalcantian notions of psychology that include the idea of sighs enkindled by the beauty of the lady’s form entering through our eyes (at the end of stanza 2) is also prevalent in the poem, while the comparison of the lady with a heavenly creature in stanza 3 owes a good deal to Guinizelli’s famous canzone “Al cor gentil” (“The Gentle Heart”). For that matter the style and angelic image also are quite reminiscent of the image of Beatrice used by Dante in Donne, ch’avete intelletto d’amore, the breakthrough canzone in Chapter 19 of the Vita nuova. It may be this kind of repeated imagery, previously reserved for Beatrice, that particularly opened the younger Dante up to charges of infidelity to Beatrice’s memory and created the reputation against which he says he is trying to defend himself by his new readings of these poems here in the Convivio. One more point of interest in this canzone is the manner in which Dante stresses twice (first in stanza 1 and then again in stanza 4) his own inability to comprehend the extent of the lady’s perfections, and the impossibility of expressing those perfections in language. Since the lady is said to embody God’s blessings in a way that transcends nature and makes those looking upon her understand a little more about God, the lady’s resemblance to God is inescapable. Like God, she is ineffable and inexpressible in a way that (as in Guinizelli’s poem) borders on blasphemy. But it will also make it more possible for Dante to claim in his commentary that the lady represents philosophy, or

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Il convivio

divine wisdom—the daughter of God himself, and thus imbued with many of his own qualities.

BOOK 3 Synopsis In Chapter 1 Dante says that his love for the gentle lady was so intense that it could not be understood or told, but he was overwhelmed by a desire to speak about his love. As he had in the Vita nuova, Dante declares that the best way to speak about his love is to praise the lady. He gives three reasons for this: First, love of self, which Dante calls the beginning of all loves, encourages us to praise our friends, who are most like us. Second, in an unequal friendship, the inferior party must benefit the other party as best he can; thus Dante by his praise benefits the lady to the extent of his power. Third, he was concerned at the time he wrote the poem that he might be accused of inconstancy for moving on to a new love after Beatrice and therefore says that he describes the lady herself to make her virtue clear. After this introduction Dante says that his second canzone may be divided into three parts: a proem in the first stanza, praise of the gentle lady in stanzas 2 through 5, and a final tornada that clears up some confusion that might be caused by the poem. In the second chapter Dante begins his discussion of the proem, which he says falls into three parts: The first expresses the ineffable nature of his subject, the second describes his own inability to express that nature in words, and the third excuses his faults in this case. But in this second chapter Dante treats only the first line of the poem—“Love, that speaks to me within my mind”—and considers in particular the terms love and mind. Love, he says, is the union of the soul and the object of desire. Now human beings most desire God and therefore are naturally drawn to those things in nature that embody the goodness of God. This, Dante says, is love, and the quality of one’s soul is apparent in the things that one loves. The speaker of these lines, then, is his love for the gentle lady, with whom his soul is united. As for the mind in which this love speaks, Dante goes into detail concerning the three powers of the soul—the vegetative power gives life, the sensitive soul provides the five senses, while the rational soul gives the power of intellect. Of

all earthly creatures only human beings have this rational soul, and in this they are like divine beings. It is within this highest part of the soul that love speaks in the poem. Dante’s discussion of the proem continues in the third chapter, where he asserts that all things in the universe are bound by some kind of love. Simple bodies love their proper place in the world. Compound bodies love the place and season in which they were created. Plants, who represent the third kind of nature, love the places that meet the needs of their composition. Animals, who possess the fourth nature, love according to their senses. But the fifth and noblest type, the human or angelic nature, loves truth and virtue. This nature is the mind, and Dante makes it clear that his love of the lady is not simply sensual, since this love addresses his mind. Clearly there are times that he cannot understand what this love is stirring in him, and times that he is unable to express what he has perceived, and these are the two kinds of ineffability he mentioned in Chapter 2. In the fourth chapter Dante focuses on the language he has used to discuss his insufficiency. He has said that because of his weak intellect, he could not speak about many of the truths concerning his love. Further he was sometimes not able to speak of even those things he has understood, because his language lacked the eloquence to do so. He lays the blame for his failure on feeble intellect and inadequate language. But, anticipating a reader’s objection that he is blaming and excusing himself at the same time, he asserts that both human intellect and human speech are beyond his power to control: that human intellect cannot concretely imagine existence outside the physical. Nor can human speech always articulate insights that the mind may have. We ourselves are not to blame for these insufficiencies. Having finished his discussion of the proem, Dante moves to the second section of the canzone in Chapter 5. This second section he divides into three parts, corresponding to the middle three stanzas of the poem. In the first, he says, he praises his lady in her entirety; in the second he praises her soul; in the third he praises her body. Beginning with the first line of stanza 2, “The Sun that circles

Il convivio all the world,” Dante goes into a long digression about the movements of the heavens. He mentions PYTHAGORAS’s idea that the Earth itself revolved as one of the heavenly spheres, and Plato’s idea that the Earth revolves on an axis, but ironically rejects these ideas in favor of the “truth” demonstrated by Aristotle, that the Earth is stationary and the center of the heavenly spheres. Those spheres move on two poles, which can be fixed to the Earth’s north and south poles, and Dante estimates the distance between the poles as 10,200 miles (Rome, he says, is 2,600 miles from the north pole). Equidistant between the poles is the equator, and Dante goes on to describe the plane of the ecliptic—the path of the Sun that reaches its northern limit at the tropic of Cancer (which Dante correctly locates at 23 1/2 degrees north), and its southern limit at the tropic of Capricorn, at the same point south. The north and south poles, Dante reasons, must have days and nights that are six months long, while at the equator days and nights are always equal. Dante ends the chapter by praising the wisdom of God, who created the universe this way. In Chapter 6 Dante discusses his second stanza more directly. The Sun sees nothing as noble as his lady. The phrase “in that hour” Dante focuses on briefly, noting the difference between “temporal” hours (the canonical hours of prime, terce, sext, etc.)—of which there are 12 during the day and 12 at night at all seasons—and the “equal” hours, which are always the same length. Only at the equinoxes are the two types of hours equivalent. When he says that the Intelligences admire her, he explains that the angelic Intelligences know things directly from the divine mind, and so they see what God intends as the perfect exemplar of the human form. In the gentle lady they see that perfect exemplar in the flesh. Human lovers, whose chief desire is their own perfection, admire her because she is precisely what they desire—human perfection. God himself admires her as a craftsman admires his finest work. Finally, as the effect of something retains some aspect of its cause, so her physical form reflects the nature of her soul (which is what actualizes the body). That physical form is so beautiful that it is clear her soul must be miraculously blessed by God beyond common human nature.

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In his seventh chapter Dante looks at stanza 3 of his canzone, in which he praises the gentle lady’s soul. He focuses first on his statement that “celestial power” descends into her. God’s goodness, he says, descends into all things, and it is received in different ways by the various bodies in the universe. The purely spiritual angels receive this goodness in one way, the partly spiritual and partly material humans in another way, and the purely material beasts, plants, and minerals in still a different way. But even among humans the various souls receive God’s goodness differently according to their natures, as some human beings reflect God’s goodness no more than some animals do, and others border on the angelic. The lady is one of these. Dante goes on to assert that only human beings possess reason in themselves, and it is through the actions of her rational soul—through her speech and gestures—that the lady demonstrates her divine qualities. She serves as an example of behavior for other women, and as an aid to faith for all people, since as a walking miracle herself she promotes our faith in other miracles. In Chapter 8 Dante deals with his canzone’s fourth stanza, devoted to the gentle lady’s physical perfections. He follows the belief that her physical beauty reflects her soul’s goodness. Seeing her is like Paradise because it causes joy, one of the delights of Paradise. The soul, he says, manifests itself most strongly in two parts of the face: the eyes and the mouth. The eyes reflect the six emotions that Aristotle finds fitting for humans—grace, love, pity, zeal, envy, and shame. The mouth reveals the soul’s delight, Dante says, but he advises moderation in laughter. The beauty appearing in her face overwhelms our senses as bright sunlight overwhelms our weak eyes and intoxicates our souls. Ultimately since, like God, her beauty cannot be adequately described, he can only describe the effects her beauty has in the world. These effects include eliminating the vices of those who admire her. Dante describes two kinds of vices—vices of habit and vices of nature. Habitual vices can be eliminated by cultivating virtuous habits, but the same cannot be said for inborn vices of nature. The lady’s beauty, however, can miraculously eliminate innate vices and restore the nature of her admirers.

266 Il convivio Nature, Dante says, created the lady deliberately for such an effect. In Chapter 9 Dante moves to the third division of his poem, the tornada in the final stanza. He explains the figure of speech used here as prosopopoeia, an address to an inanimate object. He says that he was attempting to excuse the poem from the criticism that it contradicts one of its “sisters”—a term Dante explains as a metaphor for another of his own poems. In the earlier poem he had called the lady proud and disdainful. But he excuses this on the grounds that sometimes appearance and reality are at odds. Dante spends the rest of the chapter explaining medieval notions of sight and how vision may be confused. He rejects Plato’s belief in a visual power moving from the eye to the visible object, in favor of Aristotle’s theory of the form of the visible object moving through the “diaphanous medium” to lodge in the pupil of the eye, from which a “visual spirit” moves the image from the eye to the front part of the brain. Our sight may be faulty because of the diaphanous medium, which may, for example, be so filled with light that it blocks out our vision of the stars. Or our own eyes may be faulty. Dante reveals that in the same year he wrote his canzone he strained his own eyes so severely through heavy reading that it affected his vision until, through rest and bathing them in clear water, he restored them to their original strength. Dante continues, in Chapter 10, to discuss the final stanza. The earlier poem (a ballata), he says, judged the lady on appearances because his soul was, at the time, full of excessive desire. Citing Aristotle’s On Generation, Dante says that desire becomes stronger as the desired object gets closer, and the stronger the soul’s passion the more it abandons reason, at which point the soul judges like a lower animal and cannot see the difference between, for example, disdain and nobility. He goes on to explain the rhetorical figure he calls dissimulation, as he addresses the canzone to excuse itself for its author’s apparent self-contradiction, but addresses the meaning to someone else—to any readers who might have doubts about the consistency of the author of the poem. In Chapter 11 Dante turns from the literal reading of his poem to the allegorical and again asserts

that the gentle lady of his canzone is the representation of Lady Philosophy. Before looking at the poem in detail, however, he provides a definition of the term philosophy. The term dates, he says, from the time of Pythagoras, whom he places in about 750 B.C.E. Prior to that time seekers of wisdom were called “wise men,” but when asked whether he was a wise man, Pythagoras answered that he was a “lover of wisdom,” or, in Greek, a philosopher. The term is thus a title of humility, Dante points out. In one sense, he says, everyone can be called a philosopher since (referring to the very beginning of the Convivio) all human beings seek knowledge. But he is using the word in its more technical sense here. As friendship, true philosophy is not based on pleasure or utility. Thus someone who studies some part of philosophy (such as music or rhetoric) for his own pleasure is not a true philosopher, nor are those such as lawyers, physicians, or members of religious orders who study some branch of philosophy in order to obtain some office or financial gain. The true philosopher is one who loves all the sciences for the sake of love of the truth, which leads to true happiness. Natural science, ethics, and metaphysics are each sometimes called philosophy, but each is only one branch of what philosophy truly is. Dante begins the allegorical reading of stanza 1 in the next chapter. When he says that Love speaks to him in his mind, he says, the love represents the study he gives to acquiring philosophy. He compares this to the affection that precedes friendship or love between two people, and he reiterates his definition of philosophy as love between the soul and wisdom. As for the Sun that circles the world in stanza 2, Dante asserts that the Sun—which illuminates and gives life to all—allegorically represents God, who illuminates all intelligent beings with intellectual light and gives life to all goodness. In a short digression Dante points out that evil comes into being through malice, but that God, foreseeing the evil, does not therefore turn from creation, since then none of the good of creation would exist. Returning to his second stanza, Dante reads the allegory as God’s seeing nothing so noble as philosophy. Philosophy is the loving use of wisdom, which is part of the divine essence of God;

Il convivio therefore God and philosophy are united in a kind of eternal marriage. Dante continues his analysis of the second stanza in Chapter 13, where he focuses on the nature of philosophy, which exists primarily, he says, in the divine substance and secondarily in intelligent beings. The angels, who “admire her from above,” are constantly in touch with her, but Dante excludes the possibility that fallen angels may engage in philosophy, because (as he has already affirmed) for philosophy to exist love must be present. Philosophy is also present among human beings, and Dante notes three points implied in his discussion of human intelligence in stanza 2: First, there is a distinction among humans, and those who live according to their senses rather than reason cannot engage in philosophy. Second, unlike the angels, humans have physical needs that preclude them from being constantly in a state of speculation, as the angels may be. Third, it is only in this state that human beings may be said to be with the Lady Philosophy. Ultimately, Dante says, philosophy, the love of wisdom, creates in the human soul a contentment with all worldly conditions, and a contempt for the worldly goods to which most people devote themselves. In his 15th chapter Dante deals with his canzone’s fourth stanza, which he says praises wisdom. In the poem he praises the beauty of the lady’s eyes and mouth. Allegorically the eyes represent the demonstrations of wisdom, through which one may see the truth, and the mouth represents wisdom’s persuasions, which make one aware of the light of truth. Through them one feels the joy of Paradise. Dante further explains that all things seek their own perfection, and human perfection is the perfection of reason, which our gaze into the eyes of wisdom allows us to achieve. Our intellect may be dazzled, as it is in the poem, because some things (including God and eternity) are beyond human capability to know and must be described only by negative reasoning. One might ask how human beings can be happy when they have a natural desire to know yet cannot know certain things. Dante explains that human desire is proportionate to our capacity here. In the same way, he says, the wisdom of angels and saints is proportionate to each individual’s capac-

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ity. Thus since each attains his or her full desire, there is no envy among them. Continuing with his commentary, and focusing on the line “Her beauty rains down little flames of fire,” Dante says that the beauty of philosophy is morality. When this line is followed in the poem by one admonishing “every woman” to look upon the lady (philosophy) as an example, Dante interprets “every woman” allegorically to mean “every soul,” who should contemplate philosophy to become virtuous. Finally, in stanza 4 Dante says he praises wisdom as the origin of all things, since she was present with God at the creation of the universe. In an apostrophe to those who ignore philosophy, Dante urges them to seek her friendship. He then quickly deals with the final stanza of the poem, commenting on his earlier assessment of philosophy as disdainful and proud. This assessment was based on his own faults, he says, in his lack of understanding her arguments. Commentary Anyone familiar with the Comedy recognizes immediately that the canzone upon which the Book 3 commentary is based—Amor, che ne la mente mi ragiona (“Love, that speaks to me within my mind”)—is the same poem sung by Casella in the second canto of the Purgatorio (ll. 112–117). There the poem is presented as nothing more than a literal poem concerning earthly love, and Cato of Utica sternly rebukes the pilgrim and others for wasting their time listening to Casella’s song rather than beginning their ascent of Mount Purgatory. Since Dante ultimately abandoned his Convivio, presumably to work exclusively on the Comedy, one might interpret this use of the poem in the Purgatorio as Dante’s abandonment of the fiction that the canzone ever had anything to do with love of philosophy, which Dante here calls the love of the truth (in Chapter 11), a part of the essence of God (Chapter 12), a study that inspires a contempt for worldly goods (Chapter 13), and one through which one may glimpse the joys of Paradise and achieve virtue (Chapter 15). If the poem were indeed about these things, then Cato would have no reason to object to it. Or it may simply be that in the Comedy Dante presents the poem as a love poem because that is how it was popularly understood by his readers, virtually none of whom was familiar with the Convivio,

268 Il convivio a book little read in Dante’s own lifetime (though important enough in the generations immediately following his death to have influenced Chaucer, who alludes to Book 4 of the Convivio in his discourse on gentilesse or true nobility in his “Wife of Bath’s Tale”). But readers with a memory of the canzoni in the Vita nuova will also recognize in the Amor, che ne la mente mi ragiona a poem made up of the same kind of images and the same praise of the angelic lady that Dante utilizes in his Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”), the breakthrough canzone in Vita nuova 19, in which Dante discovers his sweet new style. Indeed without Dante to tell us otherwise, it would be easy to assume that Amor, che ne la mente mi ragiona is another poem praising Beatrice herself. It includes the same estimation of the lady as a heavenly being, admired by the angels; the same advice to ladies to use her as an example of what to strive for; the same declaration that her beauty is beyond what nature typically creates; even the same protestation that he is incapable of praising her as she deserves. No wonder Dante feared that he would be accused of having forsaken Beatrice for a new love. If the new gentle lady is allegorized as Lady Philosophy, however, these similarities pose no difficulty. In fact they reinforce his claims in the Vita nuova that his love of Beatrice is an intellectual love, on a higher plane than mundane physical attraction, and of the same quality as this later intellectual love of philosophy. More important it also foreshadows the portrayal of Beatrice in the Comedy, especially in her first meeting with the pilgrim at the summit of Mount Purgatory. If, as many readers agree, one of Beatrice’s chief allegorical meanings in the Comedy is Divine Wisdom, then a love song to philosophy is perfectly appropriate if applied to her. What connects this poem particularly with Beatrice in both the Vita nuova and the Comedy is Dante’s focus on the eyes and the mouth of the lady. Here Dante says in Chapter 15 that the lady’s eyes signify wisdom’s “demonstrations” while her mouth denotes wisdom’s “persuasions.” In the pilgrim Dante’s encounter with Beatrice in the earthly Paradise he first stares

into her eyes—which at the time are reflecting the Griffin, representing the dual nature of Christ (Purgatorio 31, ll. 106–123). At the end of that same canto her attendant maids ask her to reveal to the pilgrim her veiled mouth, which Dante finds indescribable, and in the beginning of the next canto he is blinded by her smile, a smile that for him suggests the promise of salvation. Understanding the mystery of Christ’s dual nature and how the Incarnation ultimately holds the promise of salvation is for Dante the epitome of knowledge gained through the love of Divine Wisdom. Even more basic in its influence on the Comedy is Dante’s employment here of the Neoplatonic concept of the great chain of being, borrowed, as John Scott points out (Understanding Dante 125– 126), from Albertus Magnus. In Chapter 3 Dante asserts that all things in the universe are moved by some kind of love and discusses the various forms of love within the scale of existence, beginning with inanimate matter (divided into “simple” and “compound” bodies) and moving through plants (which love the places that nourish them) and animals (whose love is sensual) to reach what he calls the “fifth nature,” that of human beings and angels, whose love is the intellectual love of truth and virtue. In a similar vein Dante maintains in Chapter 7 that God’s goodness descends into all created beings, but that because of their inherent differences, these beings receive and respond to God’s goodness in different ways. This variation occurs even with human beings themselves, among whom each individual responds to this goodness in his or her own way—some, Dante says, responding in ways more similar to those of the purely sensual beasts. This concept of natural variation along a scale determined by inherent qualities is taken up again in Chapter 15, where Dante raises the question of how, given human beings’ natural desire to know the truth, they can possibly be happy when there are things they cannot know, such as the nature of God and of eternity. Dante’s answer—that the natural desire of human beings, and of angels as well, is proportionate to their own natural capacities for knowledge, and therefore they can be happy in having reached their natural capacity for knowledge in

Il convivio the mundane world—depends once again on this governing idea of a natural scale of perfection. These concepts are basic to the Comedy. First, the idea that all created objects are governed by love lies behind Virgil’s important discourse in Canto 17 of the Purgatorio in which he attributes all human actions to love and defines sin as either perverted, misdirected, or insufficient love. This analysis explains not only the structure of Purgatory but that of the Inferno as well. As for the Paradiso, the thorny problem of a hierarchy in Heaven, reflected by the souls and the angels represented in the various heavenly spheres as well as in the seating arrangement of the mystic rose in the Empyrean Heaven itself, is solved by the principle Dante expresses here in the Convivio. If men and angels both have an intellectual desire in proportion to their natural capacities, then their happiness in Heaven is determined by their own capacities, which will vary. Thus there is a scale of perfection in Heaven, but since each individual is perfected to his own capacity, there is no jealousy or discontent with Heaven’s hierarchy. One final point of interest to readers of the Comedy is Dante’s remark in Chapter 9 that he spent so much of his time focused on reading philosophy that around the time he wrote this canzone he severely strained his eyes and damaged his vision. Many readers believe that it was at that time that Dante became especially devoted to SAINT LUCY, the patron saint of eyesight (her name, Lucia, means “light”). He may have credited her with saving his eyes. In any case Dante introduces Saint Lucy in the Comedy as the saint to whom he was particularly devoted and makes her the symbol of illuminating grace in the poem. She appears with Beatrice and the Virgin Mary as one of the three heavenly ladies concerned with Dante’s salvation in Canto 2 of the Inferno. In Purgatorio 9 she goes to Dante while he sleeps and carries him up Mount Purgatory to the gate. He last sees her seated in the Mystic Rose in Canto 32 of the Paradiso, thus portraying her in all three canticles of his Comedy. It seems quite possible that his devotion to her began with his troubled vision caused by his intense study of philosophy.

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CANZONE 3 Synopsis Book 4 is introduced by the canzone Le dolci rime d’amor, ch’i’ solìa (“The tender rhymes of love”), a complex poem comprising seven stanzas and an envoy and dealing with the nature of true nobility. In the first stanza Dante says that he is backing away from his customary theme of love because his proud lady has spurned him. For the time being, at least, he says he will turn to the subject of true nobility, in order to refute those who believe that nobility lies in wealth. In order to proceed in his argument, he calls on the lord that dwells in the lady’s eyes—by which he means truth. In stanza 2 Dante traces what he takes to be the history of the idea of nobility. A past emperor (Dante identifies him as FREDERICK II in his commentary) decided that ancient riches and courteous behavior defined nobility, and eventually the second part of that definition was dropped, so that now the general view is that ancestral wealth is the only criterion for nobility. Thus even the basest person can claim nobility if he is some famous man’s grandson. In the third stanza Dante refutes the opinion of the Emperor mentioned in stanza 2. Just as it is erroneous to claim that man is a “living tree,” as this emperor held, so his claim concerning nobility is also false. Riches cannot confer nobility, because they are themselves base and have as little effect on one’s character as a river has on a tower that stands far away from its flow. Riches cannot give peace of mind; therefore, a person of sound mind is not destroyed by losing them. Dante deals in the next stanza with the question of whether one born into the lower class can achieve true nobility. Most deny this possibility, but Dante claims that their argument—based on the assumption that time is a prerequisite for nobility—is faulty. Since in the full course of time all human beings descend from the same first parents, then all must be considered noble, or all base. Or, if one is a Christian, all human worth depends on Christ. Thus Dante rejects all arguments defining nobility in terms of wealth or birth. Citing Aristotle’s Ethics, Dante proclaims in stanza 5 that all good actions arise from virtue. Further nobility by definition implies goodness. Since

270 Il convivio both virtue and nobility have the same effect then either one encompasses the other or both have the same source. In stanza 6, Dante argues that nobility must stem from virtue, and not the opposite. All virtuous acts result from virtue itself, and no one is virtuous by birth. Virtue, Dante says, is the seed of happiness instilled in persons by God himself. In stanza 7 Dante contends that a soul endowed with this virtue demonstrates it in her actions. When young she is obedient, pleasant, and modest. In her maturity she is strong, temperate, and full of love. When old she is prudent and generous, and in death she is reunited with God. In his ending tornada the poet addresses his song, sending it out to combat the ill informed. Dante instructs the song to tell his lady, when it approaches her, that it is speaking of a friend of hers. Commentary This third canzone is metrically the most complex in the Convivio. It consists of seven 20-line stanzas rhyming a b b c b a a c c d e e d d d f f e g g. In each stanza lines 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, and 17 contain seven syllables each, while all others are 11-syllable lines. In the final envoy, or tornada, there are six lines, rhyming a a b c c b—like the sestet of a sonnet, but with lines of varying lengths, the second and fifth having seven syllables and the others having 11. The theme of the poem is clearly different from that of the previous canzoni, and when Dante says he is leaving the “tender” rhymes of love, he uses the word dolci, the word he himself used (in Purgatorio 26, l. 57) to describe the “sweet new style” (Dolce stil novo) that he used in his Cavalcantian love poetry. Yet in its style Le dolci rime d’amor, ch’i’ solìa is not unlike Cavalcanti’s own best known canzone, “Donna me prega” (“A Lady Asks Me”), since here Dante give a learned definition of the term gentilezza (or “nobility”), and in that poem Cavalcanti had given a learned definition of love. Structurally the poem follows the Scholastic method called the quaestio disputata (the disputed question), an approach modeled on Aristotle and used in the universities, as well as in Scholastic treatises like Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles. In the early part of the poem Dante lays out the views of previous thinkers that provide false

answers to the question “What is true nobility?” He gives three such arguments at the beginnings of stanzas 2, 3, and 4 and in each stanza follows the argument with a determinatio or refutation of the false answer. In stanzas 5 through 7 Dante provides his ratio, his own argument that acts as a direct rebuttal of the claims of the earlier authorities. In the tornada Dante tells his song to report to his lady to whom it is addressed that he is speaking of a friend of hers. Since the poem is originally intended for the woman he calls the “gentle lady,” he can make this claim concerning a poem about “gentleness” or true nobility. But it seems Dante may also have in mind the addressee as the allegorical Lady Philosophy, since he refers in the first stanza to a lord dwelling in the lady’s eyes. Considering what he has said in the previous chapter about the allegorical meaning of the lady’s eyes— that they represent the “demonstrations” of wisdom—it would seem that he is here referring to the truth that wisdom’s demonstrations reveal. The poem itself becomes a demonstration of the philosophical truth about nobility.

BOOK 4 Synopsis Dante begins his fourth and final book with the assertion that love, which makes the lover more like the beloved, inspired him to love and hate the things that his lady (i.e., philosophy) loved and hated. Thus he loved those who followed truth and hated those who did not. Realizing that hatred of persons was unreasonable, he concentrated his hatred instead on the malice and errors that made some turn from truth. The error he hated most was that regarding the goodness bestowed in human beings by nature, generally called “nobility.” Because of the confusion concerning this term, good people were often held in contempt and the evil were exalted. Thus he began the canzone preceding this book. So important was its theme that he employed no figurative language but attacked the fault directly. Thus in this book he will not speak of allegory but only explain the literal meaning of the poem. In Chapter 2 Dante divides his canzone into two parts: the first stanza or preface and the body of

Il convivio the poem. The first stanza he further subdivides into three parts. In the first (ll. 1–8) he says that he intends temporarily to stop writing of love because his lady’s looks appear to be disdainful (though he insists that appearance differs from reality). In the second part (ll. 9–17) he senses that the time is not right to sing of love and declares his intent to speak of the quality that makes one truly noble. He will, he says, speak with harsh and subtle words: Harsh refers to the sounds of the words, which should not be sweet because of the heavy subject. Subtle. refers to the meaning of the words, which provide astute and adroit reasoning to argue their point. He promises in the poem to show what is true and to refute what is false, though he says in the book itself he will do these things in the opposite order. Finally, in the third section (ll. 18–20) he calls on truth, which lives in the eyes (previously identified as the “demonstrations”) of philosophy. This truth makes the lady love herself, he says, because the philosophic soul contemplates truth but also contemplates itself in the act of contemplation and sees the beauty in that act. In Chapter 3 Dante says that the body of his poem also divides into three parts: Stanzas 2–4 discuss the opinions of others, stanzas 5–7 focus on the truth about nobility, and stanza 8 addresses the canzone itself. The first of these subdivisions is in two parts, with stanza 2 stating the opinions of others and stanzas 3–4 refuting them. Finally Dante focuses on stanza 2 itself, dividing it into two parts, the first showing where the opinion of the emperor is wrong, and the second showing why the opinion of the common people is wrong. The emperor, he says, is Frederick II of Swabia (whom Dante considered the last true Roman Emperor, at least before HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG in 1310), whose opinion was that true nobility required ancient wealth and courteous manners. Some lesser person, no doubt one without fine manners, omitted the second part of the emperor’s definition. There are two reasons for Dante to take these opinions seriously, he says: One is that, according to Aristotle, what most people regard as true cannot be completely wrong. The second is that Imperial authority should be respected. Accordingly he decides to begin his discussion by examining Imperial authority.

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In Chapter 4 alluding to Aristotle’s maxim that “man is a social animal,” Dante argues that human beings need society to achieve happiness, because they need things that no individual may supply. Thus humans join to form cities and nations, but to prevent nations from warring with one another, a supreme authority is needed—that of a single monarch or Imperial authority, who like the captain of a ship has complete command of the nations. Acknowledging that some may question why this authority must be a Roman prince, Dante argues that experience shows the Latin race to be the strongest, cleverest, and most temperate. The Roman Empire was won not simply through force, but because God had ordained it. Thus, citing Virgil, Dante argues that the empire began in reason, not force. Dante devotes Chapter 5 to proving that the Roman Empire was ordained by God, initially for the purpose of ensuring that the world was properly prepared for the coming of Christ. Proof of this divine destiny can be seen in the fact that KING DAVID, from whose line Christ was to spring, was born at the same time that Aeneas traveled to Italy and founded the Roman nation. From the testimony of the evangelist Luke Dante asserts that at the time of Augustus there was universal peace in the world—a situation that had never occurred before and would never occur again—and thus only at that time was the world prepared for Christ’s coming. The history of Rome also provides evidence of the empire’s divine origin. Dante lists numerous Roman citizens of “godlike” virtue, including Fabricius, who refused an inestimable amount of gold rather than betray his country, or Cincinnatus, who was called from the plow to be dictator and save his country, after which he voluntarily returned to his plow. Curius, Mucius, Brutus, and Cato are others extolled by Dante for their virtue. Further, the hand of God was manifest in several miraculous military victories that established Roman hegemony, such as the war against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, or Cicero’s defense of Rome against the machinations of Catiline. Clearly for Dante Roman dominance was planned and engineered by God’s own hand.

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Having discussed the origin of Imperial authority, Dante goes on to speak of philosophical authority in Chapter 6. Claiming that in this sense authority means simply the “pronouncement of an author,” Dante goes into the purported etymology of the word, asserting that it may be derived from the verb auieo, meaning “to tie words together,” or from the Greek autentin, meaning “worthy of faith and obedience.” Combining both senses, he declares that philosophical authority means “pronouncement worthy of faith and obedience” and proclaims that Aristotle is the philosopher most worthy of this authority. He supports Aristotle as the philosopher who saw most clearly the ultimate end for which human beings exist. In a quick survey of the history of philosophy Dante begins with Zeno, who said that our chief end was rational integrity, irrespective of any emotional persuasion. His followers were Stoics, of whom the illustrious Cato was one. Epicurus proposed that the end of human life was pleasure, by which he meant a life free from pain, and Dante lists the illustrious Torquatus as a follower of Epicurus. Socrates and Plato saw the end of life as virtue, and their followers, like Speusippus, were called Academics. Aristotle perfected the ideas of the Academics, and because he liked to discourse while walking back and forth, his followers were called Peripatetics. The ideal government, Dante concludes, unites Imperial authority with philosophical authority. Directly addressing Charles II, king of Naples, and Frederick II of Aragon, king of Sicily, Dante laments the present governors of Italy, whose advisers cannot be trusted to give wise moral advice. In Chapter 7 Dante returns to the subject of his poem’s second stanza, debunking the opinion of those who believe that one should be called noble if his ancestors were, even if he himself is worthless. Such a person, Dante insists, is not only base, but more base than anyone else. This evaluation is explained by the fact that the person who had a noble ancestor had a pattern of noble behavior set before him that he himself neglected to follow. Such a person, Dante says in his poem, is “like one who’s dead.” Dante explains this by reference to Aristotle’s De anima, where the philosopher defines life as “the state of being of living things.” Dante,

returning to the scale of being he had utilized in the previous book, maintains that this state of being varies: In animals life is sensation and movement, but in human beings it consists of rational thought. To forsake reason is therefore to forsake human life. Since straying from virtue, particularly when one has been shown explicitly where virtue lies, is tantamount to straying from reason, the base man is not truly alive in a human sense; he survives as one for whom life is simply sensation—he survives as a beast. Dante begins Chapter 8 by distinguishing between reverence—an important aspect of integrity—and its opposite, arrogance. He goes on to prove that though (as he admitted in Chapter 3) he appears to disagree with both Imperial authority and the authority of Aristotle, in fact he is not being arrogant. Dealing first with Aristotle, Dante explains that the philosopher’s statement that what is believed by the majority cannot be completely false referred to mental conceptions, not sense impressions. The Sun, he says, appears to most people to be perhaps a foot in diameter, whereas in fact its diameter is 35,750 miles. Similarly the perception that nobility consists of buildings, possessions, and lordships (things in the power of FORTUNE) is based on sense impressions and therefore need not be trusted. In demonstrating his lack of arrogance toward the empire, Dante first defines reverence as the “confirmation of due submission by manifest sign.” Failure to make this confirmation may be either “irreverent,” in which case one offends against the truth by renouncing this confirmation, or “not reverent,” in which case one refuses to acknowledge a submission that does not exist and therefore does not offend against the truth. Dante assigns his difference with Frederick II of Swabia’s comments to this latter category, since he owes him no submission in the present case. In Chapter 9 Dante explains this last statement. Like everything else, Imperial authority extends only to the limits God has fixed for it, and thus extends only as far as human activities extend. There are different kinds of human activities subject to human reason and will, including things the mind contemplates but cannot perform (like math-

Il convivio ematics), acts the mind both contemplates and performs (like speech), acts the mind performs utilizing other means (mechanical arts), and activities that are acts of will (like choices between a right and wrong action). These latter, voluntary actions are matters related to justice, which is regulated by laws that the emperor enacts and administers, and this is the extent of Imperial authority. Definitions of, for example, nobility do not involve such acts of will and hence are not subject to Imperial authority. Thus Dante says he owes the emperor no submission here. Having demonstrated the legitimacy of his stance, Dante goes on in Chapter 10 to discuss his refutation of the earlier arguments about nobility. There is no need to dispute the emperor’s assertion concerning “fine manners,” but his choice of ancestral wealth—naming both time and riches— as a criterion for nobility must be refuted. Frederick (who had apparently defined man as “a living tree”) erred in not using the term rational to define man. In the same way he erred in supposing ancestral wealth to define nobility. Nobility, Dante says, should first of all be defined according to its effects rather than its causes. Further riches themselves are base or degenerate (as are all things in Fortune’s power) and hence are themselves the opposite of nobility; thus they cannot confer their opposite. Nor can riches take nobility away, because they are totally distinct from it, and, citing Aristotle’s Physics, Dante maintains that anything that is changed must be connected with whatever caused that change. Riches have no connection with nobility. In Chapter 11 Dante sets out to prove that riches are base. The more perfect a thing is, he says, the more noble it is; the more imperfect, the more base it is. Riches are imperfect, hence base. This is not to say that considered in themselves gold or pearls do not have a kind of perfection, but considered as human possessions, they are imperfect. The reason for this is the injustice in their distribution. One can obtain riches by pure chance (for example, finding a hidden treasure), by chance aided by reason (for example, through inheritance), or through chance aiding reason—either lawfully (through a respectable occupation) or unlawfully (through theft). Citing an example from Aristotle of a base peasant

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finding a bushel of silver at Falterona, Dante argues that chance is more likely to favor the bad than the good. Deliberately naming no names, he asserts that inheritance comes more often to the bad than the good. Theft of course always benefits the bad. And as for lawful gain through a good occupation, Dante claims that a good man is less likely to accrue wealth this way, since his mind and efforts will be directed toward more important things than the accumulation of riches. Thus all ways of gaining wealth are likely to be unjust. A good man will be involved in a different kind of commerce: the performance of benevolent acts, through which one accumulates friendships. In Chapter 12 Dante continues his demonstration of the baseness of riches: Not only does their acquisition result from injustice, but they are actually dangerous, since accumulating them only makes one desire more. This makes them particularly dangerous, since they promise complete satisfaction but in fact bring about its opposite. The more riches one acquires, the more one desires to have; thus riches never produce satisfaction but only greater desire and hence confer grief rather than peace. Dante cites Boethius, Solomon, David, SENECA (LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA THE YOUNGER), HORACE (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS), Juvenal, and both categories of law (canon and civil) as evidence that riches are imperfect no matter how much one accumulates. Dante admits that it might be possible to make the same argument about knowledge: As with riches, the more knowledge one obtains the more desire one has for more. Dante shows that this is indeed true but denies that it necessarily follows that knowledge is dangerous and base, or the cause of grief. In Chapter 13 Dante first deals with the difference between the desire for knowledge and the desire for riches. Desire for knowledge grows, it is true, but its growth is a progression from small things to greater ones—not, as with riches, a single unsatisfied desire. The desire for knowledge is satisfied with the attainment of each new portion of knowledge, but the desire for riches is never satisfied. This is explained in part by the fact that desire for knowledge is a natural desire, and (as Dante had argued in Chapter 3) natural desires are limited by

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the natural world, and so may all be satisfied within certain natural limits. There are no natural limits on the desire for riches. Dante now moves back to the proof that desire for riches is harmful. This desire is harmful for two reasons, he says: It is the cause of evil and it is the absence of good. It causes evil in that those who possess riches are fearful of losing them. Dante cites the story by LUCAN (MARCUS AMNAEUS LUCANUS) of Amyclas, whose poverty allowed him to be perfectly secure in the presence of GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR (a story Dante utilizes again in Canto 11 of the Paradiso). Riches also contribute to the privation of good, since their possession precludes the virtue of generosity—which can only exist in giving up riches. Thus no upright or true man will covet riches. In Chapter 14 Dante begins to deal with the opening lines of the fourth stanza of his canzone, and the question of whether ancestral wealth is the cause of riches. Those who hold to this opinion believe that one born base can never be called noble, and that one whose parents were born base can never be called noble. Dante points out the absurdity of this opinion, since such a contention implies an infinite regression, so that there is no point of time in history when anyone could have become noble. Anticipating that one might counter this by suggesting that one becomes noble when people no longer remember the baseness of his ancestors, Dante finds four fallacies in this argument. First, it would imply that the more absentminded people were, the more noble they would be. Second, it would mean that the nobility of other things, such as animals or plants, would be determined by their goodness but that of men only by their loss of memory. Third, it would mean that the cause would sometimes follow the effect: Citing the example of GHERARDO DA CAMMINO (the “good Gherardo” of Purgatorio 16, l. 124), Dante suggests hypothetically that if Gherardo’s grandfather were base, Gherardo himself would still be considered noble by all who knew him, even if they remembered the baseness of his ancestor—thus his nobility would have preceded its supposed cause. The fourth fallacy is that one might be considered noble after death who was not held so during life.

For all these reasons Dante rejects the idea that an ancient family name bestows nobility. In Chapter 15 Dante deals more specifically with the question of whether a man or a family line can change from base to noble. To assume that this is impossible involves two fallacies, he says. In the first if we assume that all men descend ultimately from ADAM, then all men are either base or noble, and the distinction between them is meaningless. In the second fallacy there was no single progenitor of humankind, but contemporary humans descended from many original ancestors, some noble, some base. This second precept Dante shows is false according to our faith, but also according to Aristotle and according to the “Gentiles” (classical pagans). The truth should, then, be clear to all sound minds. The chapter ends with a lengthy digression on possible sicknesses of the mind, which include in Dante’s view arrogance (the assumption that one already knows everything), weak-mindedness (the bestial condition of never seeking knowledge at all), and capriciousness (the tendency to jump around in one’s reasoning rather than following the rules of logic). People with these defects, in addition to those born with a mental handicap or those who are mad, may not understand, but everyone else will see the emptiness of this assumption about ancestry and nobility. Dante moves in Chapter 16 from his refutation of false notions of nobility to his discussion of what true nobility in fact is. Referring to stanzas 5 and 6 of his canzone, he first proceeds to define nobility in any created thing as the perfection of the virtue natural to that particular thing (referring the reader to Aristotle’s definition in the seventh book of his Physics). Dante rejects the opinion of some that the word noble is derived from the verb nosco (“to know”), and therefore the best-known example of anything is the noblest example. Instead, he says, the word is from non vile and thus means something that is “not base.” He then goes on to ask how to find nobility in human beings and asserts that this can be done by examining the fruits of nobility—moral and intellectual virtues. Citing the second book of Aristotle’s Ethics, Dante proceeds in Chapter 17 to stress that all moral virtues have a single source. Moral virtues,

Il convivio he says, lie completely within our power, and their source is the habit of good choice. Following Aristotle, Dante names 11 moral virtues: courage, temperance, liberality, munificence, magnanimity, honor, gentleness, affability, truth, good disposition, and justice. Some would include prudence among the moral virtues, but Dante leaves it out, agreeing with Aristotle that it belongs with the intellectual virtues. There are two vices related to each moral virtue. One of these vices is the lack of the virtue (as, for example, avarice may be the absence of liberality); the other is excessive practice of the virtue (as prodigality may be excessive liberality). Thus each virtue is a mean between two vices. The practice of virtue results in happiness, Dante claims. But there are two kinds of happiness, one pertaining to the active life and one to the contemplative life, and of these, the active life is good but the contemplative life is better. For this Dante cites both Aristotle (Ethics 10) and the story of Martha and Mary from Luke 10.38–42. The moral virtues, Dante implies, are those appropriate to the happiness of the active life. For the contemplative life one also needs to practice the intellectual virtues. In Chapter 18 Dante explains how through inference and probability it can be concluded that each of these several virtues proceeds from a single cause, and that is nobility. These virtues have in common an association with nobility, and so it must be concluded that either moral virtue or nobility is the cause of the other, or that both are caused by a third thing. But since all virtues have this same nobility in common, induction and common sense suggest that nobility is virtue’s cause. Dante moves to a discussion of his sixth stanza in Chapter 19. Nobility can be found wherever virtue is, he says, but virtue is not found wherever nobility is. Nobility also comprises good innate qualities (such as piety), honorable emotions (such as modesty), and bodily perfections (such as beauty). But the nobility of human beings produces so many and such varied fruits, Dante asserts, that in these ways it surpasses the nobility of the angels. In particular he mentions the emotion of shame: Shame is no virtue, but it is an emotion worthy of praise in women and in children since it denotes a dread

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of dishonor; hence it is a fruit of nobility, though it cannot be called a virtue. In Chapter 20 Dante proceeds to define nobility. Every virtue derives from nobility, he says; thus no one should claim to belong to nobility by race if he does not demonstrate virtue, the fruit of nobility. Instead nobility derives from grace and is thus a divine gift. But it is a gift imparted only to the soul disposed to receive it. The moral virtues, therefore, are the fruits of the nobility that God has granted the prepared soul—thus nobility itself may be defined as the seed of happiness and virtue divinely infused in a well-primed soul. Dante calls Chapter 21 a “special chapter”; indeed it is a difficult one, because in it he discusses how goodness descends into the human soul, first from the point of view of philosophy, then from the point of view of theology. The philosophical explanation relies heavily on Scholastic theories of the soul. The seed that falls into the human vessel delivers the power of the generative soul (that forms the human), the celestial soul (that gives life), and the combination of elements (earth, air, fire, and water) that produces the temperament. When the soul comes to life, it receives the possible intellect (the soul’s rational power that holds in potentiality the universal forms of nature). The purity of the created soul determines the degree to which the possible intellect and its virtues are realized. Dante follows this with a simpler theological explanation of the process. In his divine love God gives each of his creatures the greatest gift that creature is able to receive. These gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, pity, and the fear of God (according to Isaiah 11.2). The mind’s desire is the first fruit of God’s seed of grace, and it must be carefully cultivated through good habits and temperance so that it becomes strong. In the long 22nd chapter Dante declares that these gifts are meant to be used well and says that he will now attempt to make his text useful by speaking more specifically about human happiness and where it lies, since those who do not understand where happiness exists cannot attain it. Following the opinion of Aristotle, he begins with the “appetite of the

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mind” (called hormen by the Greeks) mentioned in the previous chapter. This human appetite is derived from divine grace, Dante says, and in the beginning loves only itself. As it grows, it distinguishes between those things it enjoys most and least. Ultimately looking into itself, it loves those parts of itself that are most noble. Finding the mind to be its own noblest part, the human appetite delights most in the use of the mind. Dante denies that the sensual appetite is a part of the mind and insists that he is concerned only with the rational appetite. This appetite incites two uses of the mind—practical and speculative. The practical use includes the exercise of virtues like temperance and justice. The speculative use, however, characteristic of the contemplative life, is the nobler use of the mind and can only be perfectly realized in Heaven, where one can contemplate God directly, rather than (in this life) through his effects. To illustrate his point, Dante interprets the story of the three Marys at Christ’s tomb in Mark 16 allegorically, so that the women denote the three philosophical schools of the active life (the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Peripatetics), the tomb is the present world, the Savior they seek is happiness. The Savior—happiness—is not in the present world but will go before them to Galilee (denoting contemplation). In Chapter 23 Dante begins the discussion of his seventh stanza and proposes to consider the signs through which a noble man can be recognized. He begins by asserting that nobility is manifest throughout the entire life of a noble man, giving perfection of his vegetative, sensitive, and rational souls. The majority of the chapter is spent discussing human life in general. Dante begins by asserting that, like the heavens whose influence affects our destinies, human life may be seen as moving in an arc—an ascent and a descent. The high point of the arc is typically reached in one’s 35th year. For this Dante cites the life of Christ, who died in his 34th year—and at “nearly” the sixth hour of the day, according to Luke (a fact Dante interprets allegorically as nearly the high point). The arc of life is divided into four parts, related to the four elements, according to Albertus Magnus: adolescence (hot and moist), maturity (hot and dry), old

age (cold and dry), and senility (cold and moist). These four ages also correspond to the four canonical hours of terce, sext, nones, and vespers. In Chapter 24 Dante more specifically addresses the four ages—adolescence, maturity, old age, and senility. Adolescence, he says, lasts until the age of 25, since until that time our rational part is not yet perfect. Maturity, the highest point of life, lasts for 20 years, so that the age of 35 is the midpoint of the mature life. Old age lasts from the age of 45 until 70. After that senility lasts for perhaps another 10 years, more or less. Among individuals these ages may vary slightly depending on one’s disposition, but the proportions will remain the same. Dante goes on to assert that nobility manifests itself in certain actions that are appropriate to each particular age. For adolescence these include obedience, sweetness, a sense of shame, and a loveliness of being. Dante ends the chapter with a lengthy digression on obedience, stressing that the young person should not be obedient to bad commands but should first obey his father, then teachers and elders to whom he is entrusted by the father. Dante continues the discussion of noble adolescent behavior in Chapter 25. One should be sweet and pleasant at this time, he says, in order to attract friends, as is best done through gracious speech and courteous actions. The noble soul will also have a sense of shame at this age, and Dante says that three emotions make up this sense. The first is awe—amazement at something seen or heard—which makes one reverent and ready to learn. The second is modesty—drawing back from repulsive things—which makes one restrained and temperate. The third is shame itself—the fear of disgrace—which makes one repent a misdeed and scorn to commit it again. As for the last quality, beauty of being, Dante refers here to the health and order of the body, which create a harmony and positively affect the soul. In Chapter 26 Dante explores the qualities of nobility that should appear in the age of maturity. In considering the inborn appetite he had introduced in Chapter 22, Dante says that this appetite must be guided by reason, so that temperance must guide the appetite and give it boundaries in its pursuit of its desires, while courage must limit

Il convivio the things the appetite wishes to flee. These qualities of courage or strength and temperance or selfrestraint are appropriate for the mature individual, and Dante cites Virgil’s depiction of Aeneas’s leaving DIDO (showing restraint) and entering Hell (showing courage) to illustrate the noble mature man. The mature individual should also show love, both of his elders because of what they have given him and of his juniors in order to benefit them. The truly noble mature person should be courteous and should also be loyal, in particular by following the laws. For all of these qualities Dante cites examples from the life of Aeneas. Chapter 27 delineates the qualities that the noble nature displays in old age. Citing Aristotle, Dante asserts that the noble individual should be useful not only to himself but also to others. One achieves one’s own perfection during the second age of life. In the third age one should use that perfection to enlighten the lives of others. Thus the noble individual in old age manifests the quality of prudence—the kind of wisdom that results in good counsel to others. One should also exhibit justice in one’s decisions in order to be an example to others. In ancient Rome this single quality was thought so appropriate to old age that their ruling body was named the Senate (from senes, meaning “old men”). Dante says that he plans to deal with justice more fully in the penultimate book of the Convivio and so is content merely to touch upon it here. One should also be generous at this stage of life, since now he is wise enough not to injure anyone (such as one’s widow or ward) through his generous acts. Finally, the old man should be affable and thus should speak of goodness—and hear it spoken of—with authority. As an example of an old man displaying all four of these qualities, Dante cites King Aeacus, who in Ovid’s story helped Cephalus of Athens in his war against Crete through his wisdom, justice, generosity, and affability. In senility the noble soul returns to God and blesses its life on earth. A natural death in old age, Dante affirms, is rest after a long journey and so should be approached by the noble soul without suffering or violent emotion. Divesting itself of worldly occupations, the noble soul anticipates being reunited with other souls in heavenly bliss,

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and with God. He mentions Lancelot and GUIDO DA MONTEFELTRO as two noble worldly men who entered the contemplative life at the end of their earthly days (though his opinion of Guido had clearly changed by the time he wrote Canto 27 of the Inferno). The noble soul also remembers the virtuous actions of its past life, which help it come to its rest with God. As the chapter ends, Dante considers the story of Marcia and Cato in the second book of Lucan’s Pharsalia. Marcia, who with his permission had left her husband, Cato, to marry Hortensius, begs Cato to take her back in her old age. Dante interprets this allegorically, claiming that Marcia represents the noble soul and Cato signifies God. In the age of senility the noble soul forsakes the demands of a noble but active life (represented by Hortensius). The noble soul, Dante concludes, wants to leave this world as the spouse of God. In Chapter 29 Dante deals with two possible questions that might arise concerning nobility. One might be from a certain prefect Dante names Manfred da Vico, who says that whatever his own qualities, he represents a family whose ancestors included many truly noble individuals. Thus Manfred himself is worthy of reverence as their representative. Dante answers this by saying that a worthless son or grandson only weakens the reputation of his ancestors and deserves only to be cast out, just as if he had deliberately defamed the noble men of his family. The second question might be from the San Nazzaro family of Pavia or the Piscitelli of Naples, who might say that because each man must be noble himself, no lineage can legitimately be called noble. Dante says that it is still possible to call a lineage noble, for just as a pile of grain looks white if the great majority of its individual grains are white, so a family may be said to be noble in the same manner. But the grains, not the pile, are the cause of the whiteness, just as the individuals, not the lineage, are the source of nobility. In the short final chapter Dante discusses the third part of his poem, the concluding stanza or tornada, through which, he says, he hoped to “ennoble and embellish” his poem. He addresses the poem itself, calling it his song Contra-li-erranti or “Against the erring ones.” He gives the song this title, he

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says, in emulation of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who entitled his summa opposed to non-Christians Contra Gentiles (Against the Gentiles). He tells the song to go forth and to show itself where the lady, philosophy, is to be found. Since she is found in the souls of all who love her, it is to them that he hopes his canzone will be of use. He says that he speaks of a “friend” of philosophy—that is, nobility, on whom philosophy focuses her loving gaze. Commentary Book 4 of the Convivio is quite different from the previous three books. For one thing it is in itself longer than the other three books combined, suggesting that Dante thought of his work in Book 4 as significantly more important than anything he had written up to that point—dealing with a topic that, in his view, was of enormous social, political, and moral significance for his time: the nature of gentilezza, or true nobility. In this the book is an important antecedent to the middle cantos of the Paradiso, in which Dante’s own noble ancestor, Cacciaguida, discusses the noble families of Florence. As John Scott points out (Understanding Dante 135), this book differs, as well, in its greater emphasis on divine grace and its more skeptical attitude toward human reason as the only guide to happiness. His radical allegorical interpretation of the visit of the three Marys to Christ’s tomb as suggesting that the philosophical schools of the Epicureans, Stoics, and Aristotle’s own Peripatetics cannot find happiness in this world is, Scott says, evidence of this change. The first truly significant aspect of this book occurs in Chapters 4 and 5, where Dante takes issue with the opinion of Frederick II concerning the definition of nobility as determined by ancient wealth and courteous behavior. Although he must refute the emperor, he does so while acknowledging the divinely sanctioned legitimacy of Imperial Roman authority. Remarkable as this is for a Florentine GUELPH, it is in fact Dante’s first important statement of the political theory he would develop in much greater detail in De monarchia (especially Book 2) and that lay behind much of his political discourse in the Comedy, most particularly Canto 6 of the Paradiso. In the first place a universal emperor is necessary for the stability of

human society, Dante argues, because an emperor, who has all things in his possession, could have no greater ambition and therefore would be the ideal authority to stifle the greed and hostile ambitions of others. But why such a monarch must be the Roman emperor is a different question, and Dante, having received a new view of Rome’s divinely ordained purpose from his close reading of Virgil, argues that Rome’s historical destiny was preordained—from the time of Aeneas, whose life corresponds with that of David and thus the messianic tradition—to become the empire into which Christ would be born, under Roman authority. These are new ideas for Dante, here presented without the polemical context of De monarchia or the Comedy, in which Imperial authority is set up as political opposition to the secular ambitions of the papacy. Another significant aspect of these early chapters, as Albert Ascoli contends (Ascoli 53–54), is his discussion of the meaning of the term author in Chapter 6. Since these chapters are concerned with the authority of the emperor and of Aristotle, Dante focuses on the term authority as meaning “pronouncement of an author” and finds two etymologies for the word author: the verb auieo (to tie words together) and the Greek autentin (worthy of faith and obedience). The meaning of authority, then, is the combination of these two definitions: “pronouncement worthy of faith and obedience.” This kind of authority applies both to Frederick as emperor and to Aristotle as philosopher. And the two kinds of authority need one another, since the emperor should rule with the advice of the wise, and since the wisdom of the philosopher can be of practical value only if backed by the authority of the emperor. But Ascoli argues that Dante has in mind, as well, poetic authority—the authority of his own vernacular canzoni, for which, if we take seriously his aim in the Convivio, the author Dante is claiming philosophical and hence political authority. Ascoli goes on to point out that the definition of nobility attributed here to Frederick II was, in fact, derived directly from Aristotle’s Politics and is so cited by Dante himself in De monarchia 2.3.3. Frederick seems to have in fact been more sympathetic with Dante’s own opinion, as a son-

Il convivio net attributed to the emperor and known to Dante demonstrates. Dante’s attribution of the false argument to the emperor here better enables the poet to assert his authority in both the political and philosophical spheres (Ascoli 55). Another aspect of this book that relates ultimately to Dante’s vision in the Comedy is his emphasis on desire or appetite, what he calls hormen. He introduces this intellectual hunger in Chapter 12 and focuses on it again in Chapter 22. In the human soul this natural appetite has as its object the Highest Good, but because its knowledge is imperfect, in the untrained soul it follows every object it sees, fixating on partial goods as if they are the Highest Good. In the Comedy, of course, this kind of mistaken pursuit of partial goods is the impetus for sin, as Virgil’s discourse in Canto 17 of the Purgatorio makes clear. The human soul needs to develop with sound rational guidance in order to grow in the right direction. But (as Dante says here in Chapter 22) even for those born into an evil environment or nature, it is possible to learn virtuous practices—to “graft” onto themselves the practices of better natures. When Dante finally defines nobility, after spending the first half of Book 4 refuting false definitions of gentilezza, he does so in a way that at first seems compatible with modern preconceptions: Virtue, not wealth or social rank, is the quality that enables us to call one noble. What is counterintuitive about Dante’s linking of virtue and nobility is his insistence that nobility must be present in a person as a precondition and cause of any virtuous behavior. Thus virtue is the effect of nobility, not its cause. Nobility is placed by God in the human soul like a seed, and the virtues that result from it lead to human happiness. Since the gracious embedding of the divine seed of nobility must occur in each individual separately, nobility is a quality of individuals, not families. This concept, too, influences the Comedy. The issue of family nobility, the question of why noble fathers sire ignoble sons, is central to the Valley of Princes in Purgatorio 7. There SORDELLO sums up Dante’s point in these chapters (Convivio 4.21 and 22) with the lines “Not often does the sap of virtue rise / to all the branches. This is His own gift, / and we can only beg that He bestow it” (ll. 121–123).

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The complicated Scholastic discussion of the origin of the human soul that Dante introduces in Chapter 21 (what he calls a “special” chapter, possibly because of its level of difficulty) is Dante’s first exploration of this thorny subject but is essentially the same description that he has PUBLIUS PAPINUS STATIUS give the pilgrim in Canto 25 of the Purgatorio: In it Dante rejects the opinions of the Arab philosophers Avicenna and Algazali (whom Dante would have known through Albertus Magnus’s summaries) that the soul is either noble or base by nature. He also rejects that of Plato, which held that the influence of the stars determined one’s nobility. Like Aquinas, he seems to have believed that there were certain innate qualities in the soul that developed in response to one’s education, training, and environment. As for the possible intellect, that cognitive part of the soul that Averroës had determined could not survive the death of the body (thus precluding individual immortality), Dante followed the opinion of Albertus Magnus in his assertion that this rational soul was united with the vegetative and sensitive parts of the soul. But each possible intellect is unique in what Dante calls its “distance” from its creator, God, the “First Intelligence.” Because of these varying distances, the individual capacity of all possible intellects are different, and this difference of necessity creates a hierarchy of human souls—a hierarchy related to the scale of being that Dante had discussed in Book 3 of the Convivio. This sort of hierarchy based on varying innate individual capacities is precisely the basis of the hierarchy of souls and of angels in Dante’s Paradise. One final point of some significance is Dante’s differentiation between the active and contemplative lives, introduced in the 17th chapter. Here he makes explicit his distinction between the two lives (represented, for example, by Rachel and Leah, and to some extent by Beatrice and Matelda, in the Comedy). The active life is good, but the contemplative life is better. In the present treatise, however, he seems content to focus on the active life, whose perfection depends on the exercise of the 11 moral virtues that he names (courage, temperance, liberality, munificence, magnanimity, honor, gentleness, affability, truth, good disposition, and

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justice). Most scholars believe that the remainder of the Convivio—from Book 5 through Book 15—was to have been concerned with these 11 virtues, one book per virtue (we know from his own testimony that Chapter 14 was to be devoted to justice). Thus the aim of the Convivio is to show how to lead the active life. This is not surprising, given the beginning of the text, in which Dante addresses an audience of people involved in such a life, who have not had the leisure to read philosophy themselves and to whom he speaks in the vernacular tongue. As for the contemplative life, Dante implies that perfection in this life depended on the exercise on the five intellectual virtues Aristotle proposed in his Ethics: wisdom, scientific knowledge, intuitive understanding, prudence, and technical skill. The fact that Dante includes prudence as one of the virtues of old age in Chapter 27 of the present book may suggest that he had begun to note some problems in Aristotle’s paradigm of active virtue. It is impossible to leave this commentary on Book 4 without mentioning the striking allegorical interpretation Dante gives to Lucan’s story of Cato of Utica and his estranged wife, Marcia. Having already extolled the saintlike virtues of Cato in Chapter 5 and having mentioned him again as the noblest representative of Zeno’s Stoic school of philosophy, Dante in Chapter 28 goes to the unimaginable extreme of using Cato allegorically to represent God, suggesting that no other human being is better suited to do so. In the act of love and forgiveness he performs in accepting Marcia back as his wife, Cato certainly acts in a godlike way from a contemporary view. But as Dante makes clear in the Purgatorio, where he makes Cato guardian of the mountain, it is his strict and rational moral judgment, unencumbered by emotion, that Dante appears to have most admired (in Purgatorio 1, ll. 88–90, his unmoved response to news of Marcia in Hell is somewhat startling). Still, calling Cato—a pagan suicide and an enemy of Caesar, the first divinely ordained emperor—more worthy to represent God than any other man, is a very strange remark for Dante. Perhaps it has something to do with the Stoic detachment from the world, which Dante may in this allegory equate with the contemplative life, to which Marcia (the human soul)

returns after marriage to Hortensus (the active life) in the fourth age, that of senility. Once again as his Convivio draws to a close, Dante uses an allegory to assert the superiority of the contemplative life over the active. This new interest in contemplation, in theological studies, may have contributed to Dante’s abandonment of what was, up to that point, his most ambitious project in 1306 or thereabout, and his commitment of his talents to a new and even more ambitious project that would incorporate a number of the themes he had explored in this work. That new project was the Comedy.

FURTHER READING Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 3 vols. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947–1948. Available online. URL: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ aquinas/summa.html. Accessed 24 July 2006. Ascoli, Albert Russell. “The Unfinished Author: Dante’s Rhetoric of Authority in Convivio and De vulgari eloquentia.” In The Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 45–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Dante Alighieri. Convivio, edited by C. Vasoli and D. De Robertis. In Opera minori, vol. I, part 2. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1988. ———. Dante’s Il convivio (The Banquet). Translated and edited by Richard H. Lansing. Garland Library of Medieval Literature. New York: Garland Press, 1990. ———. Dante: The Banquet. Translated by Christopher Ryan. Stanford French and Italian Studies, vol. 61. Saratoga, Calif.: Anma Libri, 1989. Dronke, Peter. Dante’s Second Love: The Originality and the Contexts of the “Convivio.” Leeds, England: Maney and Sons, 1997. Foster, Kenelm. “Religion and Philosophy in Dante.” In The Mind of Dante, edited by U. Limentini, 47– 78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Gilson, Étienne. “Philosophy in the Banquet.” In Dante the Philosopher, translated by David Moore, 83–161. London: Sheed and Ward, 1948. Scott, John A. Understanding Dante. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. ———. “The Unfinished Convivio as a Pathway to the Comedy.” Dante Studies 113 (1995): 31–56.

Eclogues Took, John F. Lyric Poet and Philosopher: An Introduction to the Minor Works. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Troyato, Mario. “Against Aristotle: Cosmological Vision in Dante’s Convivio. Essays in Medieval Studies 20 (2003): 31–46.

Eclogues (ca. 1319–1320) The last occasional poems Dante wrote were two pastoral lyrics in Latin hexameter verse that formed part of a correspondence with Giovanni del Virgilio, a professor of classics at the great university of Bologna. Although their authenticity has occasionally been questioned, most scholars accept them as genuine, particularly since GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO mentions them in his list of Dante’s works. There are five extant manuscripts of the Eclogues, which were not printed until the 18th century. Citations of the text of the eclogues in the following are to the Wicksteed and Gardner translation, available on the Princeton Dante Web site. In about 1319 Giovanni (called “del Virgilio” because he was known for his literary imitations of Virgil) had sent Dante, then living in RAVENNA, a verse epistle of his own, written in Latin hexameters, praising Dante’s talent but chiding him for writing the Comedy in the vernacular. Giovanni seems to be an early Italian humanist of the same bent as FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) PETRARCH, for whom the learned language of Latin was the only vehicle for serious literature. Dante has written about the “threefold fate” of human souls, says Giovanni, but he has written it in a language that the “unlettered folk” can understand so that his verse is “croaked out” on street corners by buffoons. Giovanni says that Dante has cast his pearls before swine. None of the classical poets, of whom Dante makes a sixth (clearly alluding to the passage in Canto 4 of the INFERNO in which Virgil, HOMER, HORACE (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS), OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDUS NASO), and LUCAN (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS), invite Dante to join their number in Limbo) ever deigned to write in the vernacular. Giovanni begs Dante to write some verse in Latin for the learned

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clerks like him, preferably on some significant contemporary subject—here Giovanni lists a number of important current political events, couching them allusively in the language of classical myth— so that, for example, Paduans defeated by CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA’s troops are referred to as “the Phrygian does torn by the stag-hound’s tooth.” Indeed if Dante were to write of these events— and do so in Latin—then he should earn a poetic crown. Giovanni, in fact, offers his own services to bring about such a coronation, proposing that he “present [Dante] to the applauding schools.”

ECLOGUE I Synopsis Taking his cue from Giovanni and responding with a pastoral eclogue in Latin hexameters in imitation of Virgil, Dante cleverly declines Giovanni’s offer of the poetic crown and his plea to write in Latin. In his poem Dante casts himself as the aged shepherd Tityrus and calls Giovanni by the pastoral name of Mopsus. The poem takes the form of a dialogue between Tityrus (Dante) and a young shepherd named Melibaeus (whom scholars have identified as Dino Perini, a fellow exiled Florentine with whom Dante was friendly in Ravenna). As the poem opens, Tityrus (Dante) and Melibaeus (Dino) are tending their flocks together, when Melibaeus asks Tityrus what Mopsus (Giovanni) has written to him about. At first Tityrus declines to answer, but finally he reveals that Mopsus has invited him to the lofty pastures of Maenalus (Bologna), where Mopsus currently plays his shepherd’s reed to great acclaim. Melibaeus expresses a desire to go to Maenalus and learn to sing these songs of Mopsus. But Tityrus refuses to go. In the first place, he says, Mopsus himself has grown pale in Maenalus and feeds himself only on the milk of song. Besides, he says, if he is to go anywhere to be crowned with the laurel crown, it should be beside his native ARNO (i.e., in FLORENCE). Melibaeus agrees but says that time is slipping away. Tityrus adds that the time will be right when he has completed his song of the spirits that dwell in the stars (i.e., the PARADISO). Then, he says, he will ask leave of Mopsus to be crowned. Why

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must Mopsus grant this leave?, asks Melibaeus, to which Tityrus responds that Mopsus has scorned the speech of his Comedy. Melibaeus asks how they may win him over, and Tityrus answers that he will send Mopsus 10 measures of milk from his choicest ewe (presumably 10 cantos of his Paradiso). Commentary The genre of Dante’s reply to Giovanni, the classical Latin eclogue, is modeled on Virgil’s 10 Eclogues (or Bucolics). These were pastoral poems, following the conventions established by the Greek poet Theocritus (third century B.C.E.), in which the characters are shepherds tending their flocks. Three conventional types of eclogue were the rustic dialogue, the shepherds’ singing match, and the lament for a shepherd who has died. Virgil’s first eclogue is a dialogue between two shepherds named Tityrus and Melibaeus. Melibaeus has lost his land to veterans of the army of Augustus, while Tityrus has appealed to authority and been allowed to keep his land. In his Fifth Eclogue Virgil presents a pair of dirges sung by two shepherds named Menalcas and Mopsus. Dante chooses to emulate Vigil’s style with a poem of 68 Latin hexameters, presenting a dialogue between two shepherds (and borrowing the names used in Virgil’s first and fifth eclogues, which he substitutes for the names of Giovanni and Dino, as well as his own). Allegorically the songs of Mopsus at Maenalus seem to be Giovanni’s lectures at the University of Bologna, while the milk on which Giovanni is nourished is the classical poetry he studies. Thus Dante’s gift of 10 cantos from his Paradiso—through which he seems to desire to win Giovanni’s respect for his use of the vernacular language—is allegorically presented as 10 measures of milk from his ewe.

ECLOGUE II Synopsis Giovanni replied to Dante’s poem with an eclogue of his own, modeled on Virgil’s Second Eclogue. He calls Dante a second Virgil and renews and intensifies his invitation for the poet to visit Bologna, where he will be given a grand reception and will be able to sing with Mopsus (Giovanni). If Dante refuses to come, Giovanni says, he will have to quench his thirst in the waters of Musone, a

river in Padua. This is probably an allusion to the Paduan writer Albertino Mussato, a composer of Latin tragedies in imitation of SENECA (LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA THE YOUNGER). Mussato is probably the person referred to in the poem as Muso, who Giovanni says will be in Bologna when Dante arrives. In fact Giovanni did send an eclogue to Mussato in 1327, and it was Mussato who eventually received the laurel crown. Dante’s response was his second eclogue, written in 97 hexameter lines to match Giovanni’s poem precisely. As Dante’s poem begins, Tityrus (Dante) and Alphesiboeus (probably the doctor Fiduccio de’ Milotti, given a pastoral name borrowed from a singing shepherd in Virgil’s Eighth Eclogue) enter a woodland to escape the heat of noon. Alphesiboeus (Fiduccio) begins the conversation wondering why Mopsus (Giovanni) enjoys living near the caves of the Cyclops at Etna (here representing Bologna). Before Tityrus answers, the young Melibaeus (presumably Dino Perini once again) runs up to them. Tityrus asks Melibaeus what news has made him run so hard, and before the winded youth can reply, his reed pipe begins to play a song. The song is in fact Mopsus’s renewed invitation—three notes short of the perfect 100, Dante says (referring to Giovanni’s 97 lines). This time it seems as if Tityrus is on the verge of accepting the invitation, when Alphesiboeus pleads with him not to go. For one thing, he would be deserting his flock and the dryads of their own grove (presumably Dante’s admirers in Ravenna). Dante replies that Mopsus has invited him out of sympathy for his exile from Pyraneus (Florence), and that he might be inclined to leave his flock if it were not for his fear of the brutal Polyphemus—the name of the Cyclops in the Odyssey. Alphesiboeus agrees that Polyphemus is indeed to be feared, with “his jaws familiar with the drip of human gore.” Alphesiboeus goes on to suggest that a laurel crown is coming for Tityrus, though it may be from the heavenly Virgin herself. Tityrus does not answer but silently assents to Alphesiboeus’s words. Commentary In his Second Eclogue Dante changes the setting of the action to Sicily, where Theocritus had invented the pastoral eclogue. Perhaps one reason

Epistles Dante does this is his introduction of the character of Polyphemus, the Cyclops, who with the other Cyclopes may be assumed to work at the forge of Mount Etna. But the one difficulty of this poem is the identification of Polyphemus. Since Etna here seems to be equated with Bologna, Polyphemus must represent some significant political figure of that city, whose politics would clash with Dante’s. Just who Polyphemus is probably depends on precisely when Dante wrote the second eclogue. If he wrote it in 1319, the chief candidate would be Ranieri di Zaccaria, who was the representative of Robert of Anjou in GUELPH Bologna from 1318 to 1319. Ranieri had pronounced a death sentence on Dante and his sons in 1315. If the poem was written in 1320 or later, the most likely allusion would be to Fulcieri da Calboli, capitano del popolo of Bologna in those years, whom Dante had condemned in PURGATORIO 14, ll. 58–66, for his brutal acts toward Whites and GHIBELLINEs. Just when Dante wrote his second reply to Giovanni is unknown. There is an extant note that has been attributed to Boccaccio indicating that Dante wrote the verse letter a year after receiving Giovanni’s second invitation, and that one of Dante’s sons sent the poem to Giovanni in Bologna after the poet’s death in September 1321. If this note is true, it may suggest that the second eclogue was the last poem that Dante ever wrote. Ultimately Dante’s Eclogues are significant for a number of reasons. First of all, as Chubb notes (776–777), they help to verify some biographical details—that Dante was content and had friends in Ravenna, that the first two canticles of the Comedy were well known in his lifetime, and that certain intellectuals, at least in Bologna, were critical of his use of the vernacular to write his great work. Second, they are Dante’s last homage to Virgil, the poet he most respected. Finally, they are the first pastoral poems in Europe since the time of Virgil himself and hence pointed the way for the pastoral conventions employed by Tasso, Spenser, Cervantes, Milton, and a host of others (Chubb 776).

FURTHER READING Chubb, Thomas Caldecot. Dante and His World. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1966.

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Davie, Mark. “Dante’s Latin Eclogues.” In Classical Latin Poetry/Medieval Latin Poetry/Gree Poetry: Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar, edited by Francis Cairns, 183–198. Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 1977. Scott, John A. Understanding Dante. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Took, J. F. Dante: Lyric Poet and Philosopher: An Introduction to the Minor Works. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Wicksteed, Philip, and E. G. Gardner, trans. “Exchange of Latin Poems between Giovanni del Virgilio and Dante, ca. 1320.” In Testo critico della Società Dantesca Italiana, edited by Ermenegildo Pistelli. Florence: Società Dantesca Italiana, 1960. Available online. URL: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/ pdp/index.html. Accessed August 5, 2007.

Epistles (1304–1321) The 13 extant Latin epistles attributed to Dante are evidence that he was an active letter writer throughout his literary career. In the VITA NUOVA he mentions that he wrote a Latin epistle to the leading citizens of FLORENCE mourning the death of Beatrice in 1290. That particular letter has not survived, but the extant letters span his poetic career in exile. The fact that they are written in Latin indicates that these are not private letters we are reading. If any of Dante’s personal letters to his wife, GEMMA DONATI, or his children survived his exile, they are long since lost. These were intended for public consumption and are formally addressed to civic or political leaders, or to important contemporary scholars or fellow poets. They are literary and rhetorical works as much as one of his occasional lyric poems and are particularly important for Dante’s biography, in the way they reflect his alliances and political attitudes at various stages of his life in exile. Some of these letters are written on behalf of others—some aristocrat or political group he is representing. Some others accompany poems or other texts that he may be sending to acquaintances. The most important of these 13 letters are the five political letters he wrote in his own name

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(letters 5, 6, 7, 11, and 12) and his famous letter to CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA (letter 13), in which he describes the allegorical method of the COMEDY and dedicates the PARADISO to the GHIBELLINE leader of VERONA. While there has been some controversy over whether the “Letter to Can Grande” is in fact genuine, most scholars today accept it as Dante’s. Quotations in the following commentary are from Toynbee’s edition.

EPISTLE 1 Synopsis The first epistle is addressed to Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, bishop of Ostia and Yelletri and the papal legate in TUSCANY. Dante writes not under his own name but in the name of the exiled captain Alexander, the council, and the entire White GUELPH party of Florence. He is writing in response to Cardinal Niccolò’s letter to the White party, delivered by a certain brother L. Dante begins the epistle apologizing for the tardiness of the Whites’ response. He goes on to say that they read the bishop’s letter with joy and are grateful for Cardinal Niccolò’s promise to heal their war-torn country. For what did they fight and bleed for, Dante asks, but for the chance to see those responsible for this civil war (i.e., the Blacks) forced to keep the peace. Their own purpose, Dante affirms, has always been only the peace and liberty of Florence. In fact, they cannot thank the bishop enough if his purpose is indeed to force their enemies to observe the obligations of good citizenship. It is beyond their own power to do so, but they hope God will reward the bishop for using his power in this way. Brother L., Dante acknowledges, has admonished the Whites to cease all acts of war and to submit themselves to the bishop’s judgment, which Dante says they willingly do. He ends by asking that the cardinal protect them like a loving father and promising that they will be obedient to him. Commentary This letter was written early in 1304. In January 1304 Pope Benedict XI had appointed Cardinal Niccolò “peacemaker” in Tuscany, Romagna, and the March of Treviso, and the cardinal had

arrived in Florence on March 10. In response to the cardinal’s contacting them, the White Guelphs here declare their willingness to submit themselves to Cardinal Niccolò’s authority and seem to hold out the hope of a peaceful return to their native city. But Cardinal Niccolò was less than successful with the Blacks and abandoned Florence on June 10, placing the city under papal interdict. When Pope Benedict died on July 7, the Whites’ hope for peaceful reconciliation died with him. This letter is the only record of Dante’s allying himself with the exiled White party. When the Whites attempted to fight their way back into Florence on July 20, Dante was not among them. By this time he seems to have abandoned them, having come to regard them as a “despicable, senseless company” in the words of CACCIAGUIDA (Paradiso 17, l. 62) and to have become a party of one (17, l. 69).

EPISTLE 2 Synopsis The second epistle is a letter of sympathy addressed to Counts Oberto and Guido upon the death of their uncle, Alessandro da Romena. In it Dante calls Alessandro his lord and predicts that the count’s memory will live long, as his noble soul will be rewarded in Heaven. Alluding to the motto on the count’s coat of arms—“We display the scourge that drives away vice”—Dante affirms that Alessandro truly lived his motto and drove vice away for the love of virtue. Dante calls for Alessandro’s family to lament, just as he laments himself, for he had consoled himself in exile through his hope in Alessandro. His consolation now, and that of the nephews, is that Alessandro has become a courtier in the heavenly Jerusalem. So he tells the nephews not to grieve too much and advises them that, as they have become the heirs of Alessandro’s earthly possessions, they should strive to be the heirs of his virtues as well. In the end Dante excuses himself for not appearing at the funeral, claiming that the poverty of exile has prevented his travel. Commentary Count Alessandro da Romena died in the spring or early summer 1304, which is the probable date for this letter. There has been some doubt as to the

Epistles authenticity of this letter, since the lavish praise of the deceased count contrasts sharply with his mention of the count in Canto 30 of the INFERNO (l. 77), where he is maligned as one of the four Conti Guidi of Romena who encouraged the counterfeiting activities of MASTER ADAM. But it is certainly possible that Dante had changed his opinion of the count by the time he wrote that section of the Inferno. The writer’s characterization of himself as a poor exile certainly fits Dante’s situation, and his motive for the letter may well be disappointment over the death of a possible patron. There may also be an attempt to curry the favor and awake the generosity of the new counts, whom he depicts as having inherited Alessandro’s wealth and, he hopes, the old count’s virtues—including, one might think, his generosity to poor exiles.

EPISTLE 3 Synopsis Dante’s third epistle is addressed to his friend and fellow exile CINO DA PISTOIA, in response to a SONNET Cino had sent him beginning, Dante, quando per caso s’abbadona (“Dante, when by chance to abandon”). In the poem Cino had proposed the question of whether it is possible for the soul to move from one passion to another, loving the second object with the same intensity as one loved the first. Dante answers that such a new passion is indeed possible and proposes to prove it both from rational argument and from authority. Our sensual faculties are not destroyed by a single act but remain ready for other acts, as long as the organ of sense is still intact. Love resides in the appetitive faculty, according to Dante, which is a sensual faculty. He leaves it to Cino to complete the syllogism. As for authority, Dante appeals to OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO), who in Book 4 of the Metamorphoses describes how Apollo, having deserted the nymphs he had loved before, sought a new love with Leucothoë. Dante includes a sonnet of his own with the letter, Io sono stato con Amore insieme (“I have been together with Love”—see RIME, number 86), in which he claims that the human will is powerless to reject a new beauty proffered by love. He concludes the letter with a recommendation that Cino read the Fortuitorum remedia (“Remedies

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of FORTUNE”)—a sixth-century work falsely attributed to SENECA—for consolation and patience in the face of the rigors of exile. Commentary Cino, the famous Pistoian poet and judge, was himself in exile from Pistoia between 1301 and 1306. Dante probably addressed this letter to him in 1305 or 1306. Cino, inspired by the learned poetry of the DOLCE STIL NOVO, gives Dante an intellectual puzzle to solve, inviting the scholarly kind of approach taken by Dante in the letter. Readers of the Vita nuova and the COMEDY may be surprised at Dante’s answer, since his attitude in those two texts is that true love remains true even after death. But there was clearly a time after Beatrice’s death when Dante forsook his earlier love (an abandonment she chides him for in Canto 30 of the PURGATORIO), and readers of the CONVIVIO will read canzoni originally addressed to the “gentle lady” whose love consoled him—a lady he identifies with Lady Philosophy in that work.

EPISTLE 4 Synopsis Dante’s fourth epistle is addressed to the Guelph captain MOROELLO MALASPINA of Valdimagra. He calls himself Malaspina’s servant and sends him his affection, excusing his failure to write sooner by claiming he has lost his freedom. He goes on to explain that when he left Malaspina’s court and reached the Arno, a woman appeared to him whose appearance dumbfounded him. Love, he says, laid hold of him and imprisoned him. Love destroyed the resolve he had taken to refrain from women, banished thoughts of philosophy with which he had been engaged, and ultimately enslaved his free will. Love now reigns within him, Dante says, and encloses an 84-line CANZONE to the same effect, beginning, Amor, da che convien pur ch’io mi doglia (“Love, since after all I am forced to grieve”—see Rime, number 89). Commentary The marquis Moroello Malaspina, hero of the Blacks’ victory at CAMPO PICENO in 1302, was nevertheless one of the generous Italian nobles who welcomed and protected Dante during his exile.

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When the pilgrim Dante meets Moroello’s cousin Corrado in Canto 9 of the Purgatorio, he expresses a heartfelt thanks to the Moroello family for their protection during the years 1306–07. Dante seems to have written this letter sometime late in 1307, after he had left Moroello’s court and was staying in the Casentino, the valley near the source of the Arno River. His description in this letter and poem of the irresistible force of love and the woman whose beauty strikes him like lightning suggests that he had not yet begun work on the Comedy, wherein love’s irresistible force is the excuse given by sinners in the second circle of the Inferno.

EPISTLE 5 Synopsis In his long and significant fifth letter Dante writes in his own voice to all the kings, dukes, marquises, and counts of Italy, as well as the senators of Rome and the Italian people. He writes to urge them to welcome to Italy HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG, the newly crowned Holy Roman Emperor. A new day is dawning, Dante says, that will mean the end of Italy’s calamities. Quoting the fourth beatitude, he claims that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied (Matthew 5.6), and that the iniquitous will be destroyed, for Christ, the “lion of Judah” (Revelation 5.5), has sent Italy a new Moses who will lead its people to the promised land. He calls Henry VII “Augustus and Caesar” and depicts him as a bridegroom on his way to wed Italy, his new bride. And when he arrives, Dante asserts, there will be a harvest of justice. Henry will be merciful to those who ask mercy but will destroy backsliders as Caesar destroyed Pompey at Pharsalia. Dante calls for the Lombards to put aside their savagery and recognize the authority of the Roman emperor, who is in the direct line of Troy and the Latins. The celestial eagle of Rome will destroy them otherwise. They should submit and acknowledge Henry’s authority, which is divinely ordained. He will set free the oppressed and turn Italy into a fruitful garden. He would rather forgive than chastise and demonstrates that the power of God flowers on earth through two sovereigns—the pope and the emperor. Both parties in Italy can look forward to

peace, Dante continues, if they stand and greet their king. All belongs to him—the mountains and rivers of Italy as well as the laws. In the last third of the letter Dante begins to present a case demonstrating that God specifically ordained the Roman emperor to be his secular representative on earth. A survey of world history from the fall of Troy to the reign of Augustus shows that God’s miraculous hand was present in shaping Rome’s destiny to create a single world empire. The result, ultimately, was the peace that reigned when Christ was made incarnate in human form. Furthermore Christ himself divided the world in two by advising that we should render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s (Matthew 22.21). Finally, Christ himself told Pilate that the earthly power the Roman governor wielded in the name of Caesar was from God (John 19.10–11). Dante’s conclusion, thus, is that God has ordained a king to rule over all mankind; that history and Scripture demonstrate that this sovereign is in fact the emperor of Rome; and finally, that Henry VII is the figure currently occupying that position, having received the blessing of POPE CLEMENT V in September 1310. The letter ends with Dante’s asking that the “lesser light”—that is, the moon—be allowed to shine where the spiritual light (the sun, representing the pope) is insufficient. Commentary Dante, choosing for himself the role of prophet in this rather astounding letter to all the princes of Italy, here expresses in brief form the theory he had been working out—beginning in the Convivio (4.4– 5) and proceeding through the entire text of DE MONARCHIA—that divine providence was behind the rise and prosperity of the Roman Empire. He develops this theme further in Canto 6 of the Paradiso, where the emperor JUSTINIAN I traces the history of Rome in more detail than Dante is able to do in this epistle. God had ordained that through Rome the world would experience universal peace and therefore be worthy to experience the birth of Christ. Further, the emperor was necessary for the kingdom of God to prosper, since only a world monarch (who owned everything and therefore could have no further ambitions) could curb the greed and ambition of other princes. Dante also

Epistles saw the emperor as the secular counterpart to the pope, and the sovereign who alone could stem what Dante saw as the disturbing growing trend of papal interference in secular affairs (something that, through the machinations of POPE BONIFACE VIII, had resulted in Dante’s own current state of exile). Dante saw Henry VII as the answer to Italy’s strife. The “two parties” he refers to here may be Guelphs and Ghibellines, or Blacks and Whites, or may even be exiles and usurpers. In any case an emperor with universal sovereignty would have the power to set right the divisions of the past and to check the power of the papacy. Henry had been elected emperor in November 1308 and in 1309 applied to Pope Clement to be crowned “king of the Romans,” after which he vowed to go on a crusade. With Clement’s approval, he announced that he would be crowned in Rome and would then devote his efforts to pacifying Italy. On September 1, 1310, Pope Clement issued an encyclical requiring that all of Italy should accept Henry as the true emperor, and when Henry subsequently led his army into Italy on October 23, Dante wrote this letter in his support. At the end of the letter Dante applies the conventional allegorical reading of the “two great lights” of Genesis 1.16 as the secular and spiritual powers, the secular represented by the moon as the lesser power. Dante was to revise this interpretation in Canto 16 of the Purgatorio (ll. 106–108), where he depicts the pope and emperor as two suns, rather than the sun and moon—indicating his rejection of the idea that the pope was in any way superior to the emperor, or that the emperor’s divine sanction was in any way inferior to that of the pope.

EPISTLE 6 Synopsis Dante’s sixth Latin epistle, written under his own name as an “undeserved exile” through the “scoundrels” in his home city of Florence, is a plea and a warning to his native land to accept the authority of Henry VII. He begins by asserting again that God had given the governance of human society to the Roman emperor and as proof suggests that when the Imperial throne is empty, chaos ensues in human affairs. He calls on all those whose presump-

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tion has led them to resist Imperial authority to quake before the emperor’s coming vengeance. The rebellious Florentines in their greed have flaunted the law of God and have denied due obedience to the emperor. But no matter how long Imperial sovereignty has been neglected, Dante declares, it cannot become obsolete. Whatever has been created for the good of all cannot be weakened without causing damage to all; thus to ignore Imperial sovereignty is contrary to God and nature. Dante compares the Florentines to builders of the Tower of Babel in their attempt to set their own authority up to rival that of the emperor. Why did they not also try to rival the papacy and duplicate the sun as well as the moon? The Florentines lack the fear of God, Dante says, which is the beginning of wisdom. He goes on to denigrate the new fortifications the Florentines had erected in 1310–11 in anticipation of an Imperial siege. The eagle of Rome is about to swoop down upon them, Dante says, and their defenses cannot stand against his power, which will destroy their false liberty and make them slaves. In a paragraph filled with anaphora (the rhetorical device using repetition with parallelism), Dante tells the Florentines that they will see their palaces destroyed, their populace divided, their churches pillaged, and their city given to the hands of strangers. Dante alludes to the fates of other Italian cities against previous emperors. He warns Florence not to take false courage from Parma, which in 1248 successfully repulsed an assault by FREDERICK II OF SWABIA. Despite that success, Parma subsequently had woes enough. But the Florentines should remember the fates of Milan and Spoleto, both destroyed by Frederick I (in 1157 and 1152, respectively). He calls the Florentines mad, by nature and by corruption and compares them to people standing inside a prison and fighting off anyone trying to free them. Blinded by greed, they are disobeying the most sacred laws, derived from natural law itself. They may think they are resisting the emperor for the sake of liberty, but Dante argues that true liberty is giving free and willing obedience to natural law. In the end Dante excoriates the Florentines as the barbaric progeny of FIESOLE. Henry is the

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elected leader of the Roman commonwealth, whose only ambitions are for the good of the whole world. With a quotation from Isaiah 53.4—“Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases”— Dante equates Henry with the Messiah himself (at least as the representative of Christ’s earthly governance). The time has come, he tells Florence, for repentance. But it is too late for them to escape punishment for their arrogance. Commentary The sixth epistle is dated March 31, 1311, and aimed at the Florentines who had organized the city’s resistance to Henry VII’s Imperial authority. Again in a letter filled with biblical quotations and allusions Dante assumes the role of prophet, foreseeing God’s judgment on the city for its presumption. When Henry had sent his ambassadors to Florence the previous year, they had presented a request that Florence abandon its siege of its perennial Ghibelline enemy, AREZZO. Now that Henry had crossed the Alps and entered Italy, the Florentines were refusing to give up their liberty and preparing for an Imperial attack. Dante argues once again that the Roman Empire is a divine creation and accordingly makes Henry a messianic figure, returning to claim the throne so long left vacant after the death of Frederick II (Dante did not consider any of the emperors after Frederick legitimate because they had ignored Italy and had not been crowned in Rome). He argues that liberty is not simply freedom from all law, but rather is the free acceptance of God’s will—a theme he would return to in the Comedy. And again he uses the allegorical interpretation of the “two lights,” asking whether Florence, which wants to set itself up as a second moon (i.e., secular authority), does not want to make of itself a second sun (ie., spiritual power) as well.

EPISTLE 7 Synopsis Dante addresses his seventh letter directly to Henry VII while the emperor was in Milan in April 1311. He calls Henry “King of Rome” and “ever Augustus,” and he writes in his own name but says that he also speaks for all Tuscans desirous of peace. He begins with language recalling the 136th Psalm,

which suggests he and his fellow exiles are like the captives in Babylon, waiting for the successor of GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR to restore justice and to sweep away the cruel tyranny of their native city, which, he implies, is in the power of Satan. He then alludes to Virgil’s famous FOURTH ECLOGUE, generally believed to predict the coming Messiah. But the emperor, to the consternation of Dante and his fellows, seems to have paused or retreated from his original purpose, leading the exiles to ask (as SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST had) whether Henry was indeed their prophesied savior, or whether they are to expect another. For his part Dante recalls his inner voice saying, when he witnessed Henry’s coronation in Milan as king of Lombardy, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Still Dante asks why Henry is neglecting Tuscany. The emperor’s power, he says (quoting Virgil’s AENEID), is not limited to a small section of Italy, nor even to the continent of Europe: Its only boundaries should be the ocean and sky, for that was how it was under Augustus. Dante then describes in some detail his theory that God chose to be incarnated in the Roman Empire because it had created peace. In being born in Bethlehem, Christ obeyed the edict of Augustus (that all the world should be enrolled). He would not have done so if it were not just to submit to the emperor’s decree. Dante actually calls shame upon the emperor for becoming entangled at Milan while the Florentine usurpers take comfort in his procrastination. He quotes Curio’s appeal to Caesar from Lucan’s Pharsalia, and Mercury’s appeal to Aeneas from Virgil’s epic, to stir the emperor into action. He looks forward to the reign of Henry’s son, John of Luxembourg, whom he compares to Aeneas’s son, Ascanius. But he warns Henry not to be like King Saul, who lost God’s favor when he failed to exterminate the Amalekites. He continues to chide the emperor for lingering in Milan through the winter and into spring. Trying to put down rebellions in Cremona, Brescia, and Pavia is like trying to kill the mythical Hydra, who simply kept growing new heads whenever Hercules lopped one off. To destroy the beast, the source of its life must be destroyed—and that source,

Epistles Dante insists, is Florence. He compares Florence to Amata, mother of Lavinia in the Aeneid, who resisted her daughter’s marriage to the Trojan and thus tried to block the will of God. Dante concludes the letter by charging the emperor, as the new KING DAVID, to destroy the new Goliath in the form of Florence. Only then can the exiles in Babylon return to the holy city of Jerusalem. Commentary On April 1, 1311, Florence had decreed that neither they nor any of their Guelph allies in Italy would allow Henry VII—whom they called the “King of the Germans” rather than emperor or king of Rome—to enter any of their territories. Dante wrote this seventh letter from the Casentino Valley, source of the Arno, on April 17, 1311, a little more than two weeks after his letter to the leaders of Florence. Henry had been in Milan since December 23, though he was to leave two days after Dante penned his epistle. Cremona and Brescia had already rebelled in February and March, respectively, and Henry needed to set off to quell those revolts. Once again as he had in his previous two political letters, Dante uses imagery drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid, a text that by this time had attained for Dante something like the status of Scripture, and that prophesied the divinely ordained authority of the Roman emperor. More important Dante speaks here in the voice of an Old Testament prophet, unafraid to chastise his leader when he believes his sovereign has strayed from divine intent, as Samuel had chastened Saul. Further Dante fills his letter with messianic allusions, calling Henry the new David, the savior of the Babylonian exiles, the subject of Virgil’s prophetic Fourth Eclogue. In one paragraph he twice alludes to words of John the Baptist, first in having the exiles ask whether Henry was the prophesied one, or whether they were to wait for another (a question John had asked Jesus in Matthew 11.3), and second when he himself thinks, “Behold the Lamb of God” upon first seeing the emperor (as John had when seeing Christ in John 1.29). Thus Dante puts himself in the role of SAINT John the Baptist, last of the prophets, immediately preceding the Messiah in the form of Henry.

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Dante did not see this as blasphemous: If the pope, descended from SAINT PETER, wielded the power of Christ in his role as spiritual authority of the world, the emperor wielded the power of Christ in his role as secular authority in the line of David. That Dante was beginning to see these two roles as equal is evident in his reference to Henry as “our Sun”—no longer does he think of the secular power as the “lesser light” of Genesis, as he had in his previous epistles.

EPISTLE 8 Synopsis Dante’s eighth letter, as well as his ninth and 10th, are directed to the wife of the emperor Henry VII, the Lady Margaret (whom he calls “Queen of the Romans” and “Augusta”), in the name of the countess of Palatine, with whom Dante was staying at the time. In this brief letter and in the countess’s name he thanks the Imperial consort for writing to her. The countess received the letter in joy and devotion and protests her unworthiness to receive the honor of a letter from Lady Margaret, asking after her health. But though she is not worthy, the countess says that such generous acts by the Imperial family are to be expected, since Lady Margaret and the emperor should serve as exemplars of behavior to lesser mortals. The countess ends the letter praying that God will reward Lady Margaret for her generosity and condescension and (with an allusion to Virgil’s contention and Dante’s belief that God had created the empire for the good of all mankind) prays that Henry will be successful in restoring Imperial authority. Commentary Dante was staying with the countess of Palantine’s husband, Count Guido di Battifolle of Palatine, in the Casentino Valley during most of the years of Henry VII’s sojourn in Italy, and the count was a strong advocate of Henry’s Italian program. Scholars have long assumed that Dante acted as the countess’s secretary in these three Latin epistles to the emperor’s wife, chiefly because they know of his presence at the Battifolle court and because of the learned allusions in the letters, including the allusion in this Eighth Epistle to Dante’s idol, Virgil, and his favorite doctrine of the divinely ordained

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authority of the Roman Empire. Lady Margaret died in Genoa on December 14, 1311, and it seems likely that these three letters were composed after Henry’s entrance into Italy in October 1310. The letters therefore were probably written between those two dates.

EPISTLE 9 Synopsis Like the previous epistle, this ninth letter is written from the countess Palatine to Augusta, Lady Margaret, presumably through Dante as composer of the letter. Once again the countess thanks the queen for her letter, saying that words cannot express her joy and reverence. She is glad to hear of the progress being made by the queen and her husband. Still although that news is welcome, the countess holds larger hopes for the future, when still greater things will have been accomplished. God, she says, has ordained that a single ruler should have authority over all mankind, and she hopes that Henry and Margaret’s (or Caesar and Augusta’s) reign will not be hindered from this purpose. She closes the letter by committing herself to Augusta’s mercy and praying that the queen keep the countess in the protection of her shadow. Commentary The ninth letter was clearly written after the eighth, and it suggests an ongoing correspondence between the countess Palatine and Lady Margaret. Here the countess expresses her pleasure at what she had been told about the successes of Henry’s Imperial agenda. Once again the allusion in the epistle to Dante’s belief in the importance of a single world ruler, an idea to which he had devoted the whole of his treatise De monarchia, is a good indication that Dante may have been the composer of the epistle.

EPISTLE 10 Synopsis The 10th epistle, addressed to Lady Margaret from the countess Palatine, is little different from the other two. Once again the countess expresses joy at having received the queen’s missive. Once again she declares that she and her husband rejoice in the positive fortunes of the Imperial pair, and the count-

ess expresses her conviction that the hand of God is in it. She then begs the queen to allow her to become a petitioner, but what the countess asks is only that the queen examine carefully the sincerity with which the countess is devoted to her. In the fourth paragraph the countess responds specifically to the queen’s request that if a messenger can be found, the countess will send her an account of the count and countess’s condition and circumstances. The countess here assures the queen that she and Count Battifolle are both prospering and in good health, as are their children, and that they rejoice in the progress being made in the Imperial cause. The letter was sent from the castle Poppi on May 18, 1311. Commentary Like the other two letters from the countess Palatine, this one does little more than express the courtesies expected from a countess addressing her queen. It lacks the direct allusions to Dante’s favorite arguments that appear in the Eighth and Ninth Epistles, but it does express the belief that God is behind the Imperial successes in Italy—though that sentiment might as easily have been expressed by the countess herself without Dante’s help. Of particular interest here, though, is the specific note that the letter was sent from Poppi, Battifolle’s castle in the Casentino, allowing us to pinpoint Dante’s residence at this time in his exile.

EPISTLE 11 Synopsis Dante’s 11th Latin epistle is directed to the cardinals of Italy, who had convened in Carpentras after the death of Pope Clement V on April 20, 1314. He begins with a quotation from Lamentations 1.1: “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!” When the greed of the Pharisees had destroyed the Levite priesthood and brought about the destruction of Jerusalem, God inspired Jeremiah to make this lament over his fallen city, Dante says. Such is the current state of Christianity in Dante’s eyes, since those whom Peter had entrusted to feed the sheep have left the Apostolic See widowed and abandoned. Thus, as Jeremiah had, Dante has arrived to lament.

Epistles He says that even the Jews and Saracens look at the current state of the church and ask, “Where is their God?” Dante condemns false prophets for claiming that the current situation has come about through necessity, when in fact the cardinals’ own free will has caused it. Calling the cardinals the centurions of the Church Militant, Dante uses the metaphor of the church as a chariot (as he does in the last cantos of the Purgatorio) and compares the cardinals to Phaëton, who drove the chariot of the sun to destruction. The cardinals have placed the church on the brink of devastation. Saying the cardinals in their greed have turned their back on the church, he compares them to the moneychangers whom Christ drove from the Temple. The specific precipice to which the cardinals have steered the church is that they, as Demetrius in the books of Maccabees, have consented to the priesthood of Alcimus (the Hellenizing high priest who broke the true line of the Levite priesthood). Some may claim that Dante is committing the sin of Uzzah, who put out his hand to steady the Ark of the Covenant while it was being moved, thus violating a divine prohibition, and was struck dead for his presumption (1 Samuel 7.1). Dante protests that, far from being presumptuous, he is one of the least of the sheep and is inspired to speak up only because of his zeal for God. He is like the blind man of John 9.1–41, who proclaims the truth that the Pharisees sought to suppress. He also cites ARISTOTLE, who advised that truth is more important even than friendship (Ethics 1.6). As for Uzzah, Dante says he has no intention of touching the Ark (i.e., the church), only of stopping the oxen (i.e., the cardinals) from pulling it over the cliff. Dante goes on to condemn the Italian prelates as a whole, accusing them all of having married themselves to greed. Neither charity nor justice is the daughter of the church anymore. Instead the church has taken the daughters of the horseleech as her daughters-in-law—here Dante alludes to Proverbs 30.15: “The leech has two daughters; ‘Give, give,’ they cry” (NRSV). He chides the cardinals for ignoring the church fathers—Gregory, Ambrose, SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, the Venerable Bede, and others—because

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they looked for the highest good, while the current leaders of the church look only for personal gain. Dante goes on to declare he is no phoenix (of whom there was never more than one in the world). Rather, he says, everyone thinks as he does, but none has the courage to speak. Dante tells the cardinals they should be ashamed, adding that shame leads to repentance, which then leads to amendment. To make them feel this shame, he reviews for the cardinals the present state of Rome, bereft now of both its lights (not only had the pope died, but the emperor Henry VII had succumbed to malaria on August 24, 1313). The cardinals should hold Rome in reverence, first because they are Italian and it is the cradle of their civilization, and second because it is the source of their being as men of the church. They should grieve for Rome’s desolation more than the rest of the Italian people, because they have been the cause of its eclipse. In particular Dante singles out the cardinal Napoleone Orsini, whose influence had elected Clement V to the papacy and thus brought about the removal of the papal court to Avignon. In his last paragraph Dante urges the cardinals to put the chariot of the church back on its true course and to fight for Rome as the seat of the true bride of Christ. The Italian cardinals must struggle against the greedy usurping Gascons and return the papacy to Rome. Commentary As he had in his earlier political letters (Epistles 5, 6, and 7), Dante once again takes on the voice of a prophet, here asserting the importance of returning the papacy to Rome from Avignon, where Clement V had moved the papal see. With Clement and Henry VII both dead, Dante saw a crisis in the church and in Rome, which in his political philosophy had been divinely sanctioned as both the political and spiritual center of the world. The opening quotation from Lamentations seems to have been one of Dante’s favorites, since he cited it earlier in Chapters 27 and 30 of his Vita nuova, there in reference to the widowed city of Florence upon the death of Beatrice. His use of the quotation here in this letter seems much truer to

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the context of the verse, since the lament of Jeremiah was for the loss of the holy city. The cardinals, who convened in Carpentras, did not elect a successor to Clement for more than two years, during which the papal see remained empty. When a new pope was elected, he was certainly not to Dante’s liking. The new pontiff was POPE JOHN XXII, who not only kept the papal court in Avignon but was perhaps even more corrupt than Clement had been, so that in the PARADISO Dante took the unheard-of step of unambiguously denouncing the sitting pope (in Canto 18, l. 130) for using excommunication as a political tool. Ultimately the severity of Dante’s tone and his constant use of scriptural allusions combine to make this letter a scathing attack on the leadership of the church. Considering the outcome of the cardinal’s conclave, the epistle seems to have had little or no effect on the cardinals, even if they actually read it.

EPISTLE 12 Synopsis Dante’s 12th letter is addressed to “a friend” in Florence, one who had apparently written to Dante about an opportunity being proffered for him to return home to his native city. He expresses gratitude to this friend (whom he calls “my Father”) for his efforts in persuading the commune to overturn Dante’s banishment. However he tells his friend that he has also received a letter from their mutual nephew to the effect that Dante might return to Florence if he pays a fine, and that he “submit to the stigma of the oblation”—that is, a ceremony in which he would have to enter the Baptistry of San Giovanni wearing sackcloth, which would indicate an admission of his guilt. This, Dante says with severe irony, is the reward of his innocence, which all the world recognizes. As a student of philosophy he refuses to perform the oblation. As an advocate for justice he refuses to pay a fine to those who unjustly exiled him. He will not return to Florence this way, he says, though he will not refuse a later invitation that does not taint his honor. Nor, he says, does he need Florence. He will not starve in exile.

Commentary The “friend” to whom Dante was writing in this 12th letter has not been conclusively identified. The internal evidence of the letter suggests, first, that he was a man in holy orders (thus the “my Father”), and second that he was someone related to Dante, since he says that they have a nephew in common. The best candidate may be Dante’s brother-in-law, Teruccio di Manetto Donati, brother of Dante’s wife, GEMMA DONATI. Teruccio is known to have belonged to a religious order, and he and Dante would both be uncles to Niccolò Donati, son of Gemma’s other brother, Forese di Manetto Donati. It is likely that Dante is writing in response to the amnesty announced in Florence on May 19, 1315. That amnesty would have applied to Dante and his sons, but it required that exiles pay a fine and engage in the humiliating oblation ceremony at the baptistry. Dante must have written this letter in late May 1315, or just after his 50th birthday. Clearly he longed for home, but his pride and his sense of justice would not allow him to accept the degrading terms of the offer. Although three more offers of amnesty were issued by the Florentine government between June and December 1316 (possibly in response to the Guelph defeat by the Ghibellines at the Battle of Montecatini in August 1315), these later proclamations specifically excluded Dante as well as others who had been exiled by the podestà Cante de’ Gabrielli. Thus the May 1315 pardon, which he fervently rejects here, was to be Dante’s last chance to return home.

EPISTLE 13 (“LETTER TO CAN GRANDE”) Synopsis Dante begins the lengthy “Letter to Can Grande” by addressing the epistle to Lord Can Grande della Scala, whom he calls the “Vicar-General” of Verona, a province of the emperor, calling himself Can Grande’s “Most devoted servant.” Of himself Dante says he is a Florentine by birth but not by disposition—an expression of disgust with the politics of his native city. Having heard the wide fame of Can Grande, which uplifts some and casts down others, Dante

Epistles says he decided to test the truth of this reputation and traveled to Verona, where he saw firsthand Can Grande’s magnificence and received his bounty and thus became the lord’s servant and friend. He does not feel presumptuous (despite what the opinion of the “common herd” might be) in calling himself Can Grande’s friend, since the friends of princes are often obscure but virtuous men. Further Dante cites Scripture to the effect that those with wisdom are friends of God (Wisdom 7.14, NRSV). In order to reciprocate the friendship that Can Grande has shown him through his bounty, Dante has sought to find a gift worthy of his great benefactor. He has found nothing more appropriate to offer, he says, than the third canticle of his Comedy, the Paradiso, which he includes with this letter and hereby dedicates to Can Grande. Having completed what needs to be said in epistolary form, he says, he will now assume the role of commentator and provide for Can Grande an introduction to his poem. After a brief discussion of how parts relate to the whole, and how it is necessary to know the truth of the whole in order to know the truth of its parts, Dante proceeds to provide an introduction to the Comedy as a whole to make it easier to understand the Paradiso itself. There are six questions that must be considered in approaching such a text, Dante says: the subject, the author, the form, the aim, the title, and the branch of philosophy to which the text belongs. Subject, form, and title must be considered separately, he says, since they will differ in reference to the part from their meaning in reference to the whole. Dante begins with perhaps the best-known part of this epistle: He asserts that the sense of his poem is not simple but rather “polysemous.” Events in the poem have both a literal meaning and other meanings that are allegorical or mystical. By way of illustration he chooses the biblical passage from Psalm 114.1–2: “When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.” On the literal level Dante says this denotes the Israelites’ escape from Egypt under Moses. Allegorically the verse refers to our redemption by Christ, Dante says. On a moral level the verse suggests the soul’s

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conversion from sin into a state of grace. Finally, anagogically the soul’s passing from the corruption of the physical world into the eternal glory of Heaven is suggested. All three of these mystical meanings, Dante says, can be called “allegorical” in the general sense of the term. This being understood, Dante declares that the subject of his poem is twofold: On the literal level the subject is the state of human souls in the afterlife. Allegorically the poem concerns how human beings, through the exercise of their free wills, merit just reward or punishment. The form of the poem, then, is also twofold, including the form of the treatise itself (three canticles, each divided into 33 cantos, each divided into rhymed lines) and the form of the treatment (which is “poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, and figurative” and also “definitive, analytic, probative, refutative, and exemplificative”). The title of the work, Dante says, is “the Comedy of Dante Alighieri,” and he adds that the term comedy is derived from the words comos (village) and oda (song), thus comedy means “a rustic song.” Unlike a tragedy, which begins with something admirable but ends with something foul or horrible, comedy begins in an unpleasant situation but ends happily. In terms of language tragedy uses the sublime, while comedy uses lowly or everyday language—although Dante cites HORACE (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS) to the effect that the language of comedy may sometimes rise to the level of the tragic. Considering the Paradiso specifically, Dante says that the subject is more specifically the state of blessed souls after death. Allegorically the subject of the Paradiso is how human beings justly merit the reward of eternal bliss. Its form is twofold, consisting of cantos and poetic lines. The title of this part of the Comedy is Paradiso. Dante now turns to the other three points. The author of both the whole and part is he. The aim of both the entire Comedy and the Paradiso specifically is, Dante says, to assuage the miseries of suffering humanity and give them happiness. As for the branch of philosophy to which the text belongs, Dante puts it in the realm of ethics or morals. Parts of the text, to be sure, are written in the manner of

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speculative philosophy, but there is always a practical purpose to those sections. From these questions Dante moves to a discussion of the literal sense of the text. The Paradiso, he says, falls into two parts: the prologue and the executive part. The prologue itself might be termed an exordium, since as an orator’s exordium does, it introduces what is about to come, but as a work of poetry it also includes an invocation. Thus the prologue to the Paradiso can be divided into two parts, one of which forecasts what is to come, the other of which invokes Apollo. Quoting MARCUS TILLIUS CICERO, Dante says that a good exordium should gain the audience’s favorable feelings, attention, and willingness to learn. In the case of the Paradiso, Dante says, the value of what he will be told (the joys of Paradise) gains the reader’s favorable disposition. The unusual subject matter (the conditions of Heaven) attracts the reader’s attention. And the fact that the subject is possible (since the narrator says he will speak of what he can remember, suggesting that the reader will be able to retain some of the vision as well) renders the reader willing to learn. Dante then spends several paragraphs proving the truth of his very first statement in the Paradiso: “The glory of the One Who moves all things / penetrates all the universe, reflecting / in one part more and in another less” (Canto 1, ll. 1–3, Musa trans.). This is proved by reason. Everything that exists must take its being from itself or some other being. God is the only self-created being, so everything is from him, either directly or medially. Dante then makes the same argument for essence and virtue that he does for existence. Thus divine goodness, wisdom, and virtue do shine in every part of the universe. Having proved this by reason, Dante then turns to authority, quoting Jeremiah, the Psalms, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus, as well as Lucan, to prove God’s presence and power throughout the universe. Dante moves on to discuss how the narrator, after his opening statement, professes to have been in the highest Heaven. This Dante defines as the Empyrean, the Heaven of fire and heat (a spiritual fire, Dante asserts). He goes on to prove in two ways that the Empyrean receives more divine

light than any other place. The Empyrean is related to all other things as cause is related to effect, and as the highest of these secondary causes, the Empyrean receives the light of the first cause, God, most directly. Second, all things that have motion are defective in some sense, because they have not attained what they are moving toward. Only in the Empyrean Heaven is there no motion, because it is in a perpetual state of perfection, and perfection, Dante says, is a “ray” of God. Once again Dante follows these arguments with support from authorities, citing Aristotle and Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, going on to quote Paul’s claim in 2 Corinthians that he has been to the highest Heaven and is incapable of remembering or relating all that happened there (2 Corinthians 12.2–5). He further cites the transfiguration scene in Matthew (17.1–8) and the scene in Ezekiel wherein the prophet falls on his face after seeing a vision of God (1.28). Dante further cites Richard of Saint Victor, Saint Bernard, and Saint Augustine concerning the inexpressibility of holy things. If readers do not believe the narrator’s claim to have seen such lofty things, Dante tells them to read Daniel, where even the sinful Nebuchadnezzar is granted a vision for the edification of sinners and subsequently forgets the content of the vision. Nebuchadnezzar had neither the knowledge (because he had forgotten) nor the power (because he could not find the words) to express his experience. Citing PLATO as an authority, Dante affirms that there are many things that the intellect perceives that language is unable to express. Dante moves on to discuss the invocation to Apollo that begins in line 13. Once again Dante divides this invocation into two parts, the first of which asks for the deity’s inspiration, and the second of which promises recompense to the deity for that help. First, the narrator prays for Apollo’s aid, then he explains his need for such help. Dante says that he will not explain more specifically on the present occasion and hopes that Can Grande will give him the opportunity to continue his exposition at a later time. As for the “executive” part of the poem—the entire remainder of the canticle—Dante says only that the structure of it will be an ascent from heaven to heaven, and

Epistles the subject will be the spirits in Paradise, whose whole bliss consists of the apprehension of God. And the work, Dante says, will end in God himself, the beginning and the end, after which nothing more need be sought. Commentary The “Letter to Can Grande” is divided into three clearly delineated sections. The first four paragraphs are Dante’s epistolary salutation, expression of admiration and gratitude, and dedication to Can Grande. Paragraphs five through 16 provide an introduction to the Comedy as a whole and the Paradiso in particular, considering the subject, form, title, author, purpose, and branch of philosophy to which the text belongs. Finally, paragraphs 17 to 33 give a close commentary on the first several tercets of the Paradiso and invite Can Grande to subsidize a longer and more complete commentary on the entire poem. The most controversial question concerning the 13th epistle is the question of its authenticity. Although nearly all scholars accept the genuineness of the first four paragraphs of the letter, the authenticity of most of the text has been questioned for hundreds of years. Indeed the letter was not specifically identified as Dante’s until the early 15th century. In 1903 Edward Moore wrote a comprehensive article called “The Genuineness of the Dedicatory Epistle to Can Grande” that allowed Toynbee to say, in his 1920 edition of the Epistles, that the matter could now be regarded as settled. Toynbee was overly optimistic. In Georgio Brugnoli’s 1979 edition of the letter Dante’s authorship of the epistle was called into question again. One of the difficulties with accepting the letter as genuine is that of the six extant manuscripts of the epistle, the three earlier manuscripts, all dating from the 15th century, contain only the first four paragraphs, while the two other parts of the letter appear only in the three later manuscripts, all from the 16th century. It is true, however, that each of the earlier manuscripts contains a transitional passage at the end of the fourth paragraph, indicating that a much longer commentary section is to come—in other words, it is clear that those manuscripts are incomplete.

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Other new challenges to the epistle’s authenticity were soon to follow. Peter Dronke questioned the letter’s genuineness on the basis of the Latin prose style, noting that the use of the cursus—regular accentual phrase endings characteristic of classical Latin—is far less frequent after the fourth paragraph here than in Dante’s other letters. But as Robert Hollander points out, the text changes from an epistle to a commentary after paragraph four—a completely different genre. Further Hollander argues that the use of the cursus in the later part of the 13th epistle is quite similar to its use in Dante’s Latin treatise DE MONARCHIA (43–53). In general Hollander’s recent lectures on the “Letter to Can Grande” have dealt with the most serious objections to Dante’s authorship. Mazzoni’s research, which Hollander draws on, did much to show that the earliest commentators on the Comedy were familiar with the letter, thus demonstrating the likelihood that the letter was written prior to the commentaries. The use of Dante’s terminology (e.g., canto, canticle) and the epistle writer’s clear familiarity with the Convivio and with De monarchia also strongly suggest that the letter is Dante’s. Ultimately the letter is certainly in the spirit of Dante’s poem and its designs. It is unlikely that Dante’s authorship of the epistle to Can Grande will ever be proved beyond a doubt, but most scholars currently seem ready to accept the probability that the letter is genuine. Another point of scholarly contention is the date of the letter. The salutation addresses Can Grande as victoriosissimo—that is, “most victorious”—Lord, and as the Imperial vicar-general. Toynbee assumed that the letter must have been composed before August 25, 1320, when Can Grande suffered a disastrous defeat at Padua, after which it would have been inappropriate to address him as victoriosissimo. But after 1318, when Can Grande won a great victory at Cremona and was elected captain general of all Ghibelline forces in Lombardy, the epithet would have been most fitting. Thus Toynbee believes 1319 to be the most likely date for the epistle (163). But other factors being equal, it seems far more likely that Dante composed the letter between 1315 and 1317, when he was a guest of Can Grande’s at

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Verona, than in 1319, after he had taken refuge in RAVENNA. Since Can Grande had conquered Vicenza in April 1311 and was appointed Imperial vicar by Henry VII in 1312, it was quite apt to call him victoriosissimo by 1315. A problem with the earlier date, of course, is that Dante would not have made much headway in writing the Paradiso even by 1317. But although Dante says in his third paragraph that he dedicates and offers the Paradiso to Can Grande, there is no reason to assume that what accompanied the letter was the complete text. Indeed the commentary simply refers to the two parts of the poem as the introduction and everything else, and Dante proceeds to comment only on the first 27 lines of Canto 1. When Dante speaks of the remainder of the poem, he speaks in the future tense: “The process of the narrative will be by ascent from heaven to heaven,” he says in paragraph 33. It is quite possible that the letter was written in 1315, soon after Dante’s arrival in Verona with only a canto or two of the poem written, and with the intent of securing Can Grande’s patronage. Indeed the letter could have been composed any time between 1315 and 1317 or even, to give Toynbee his due, any time up to 1320. The letter’s most important points are its characterization of the Comedy as “polysemous,” and its assertion that the poem should be read—as is Scripture—as both literal (or historical) and allegorical (or mystical). The three separate mystical senses—the allegorical (which we might call typological), the moral, and the anagogical—are the same as those discussed by SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS (ST 1, q. 1, a. 10) and so should be no particular surprise to any reader. Dante’s use of the passage from Psalm 114 is also no accident, since it is a verse of special significance in the Purgatorio, as the psalm being sung by the souls of the redeemed as they arrive on the shores of Purgatory. Indeed it is precisely scenes like this one in Purgatorio that led Barolini to remark that the question of the authenticity of the “Letter to Can Grande” is moot: The poem itself teaches us how to read it allegorically, so the instructions provided in the epistle really are not necessary. The definitions of comedy and tragedy provided in paragraph 10 are another significant aspect of

this letter. This paragraph, too, has caused some controversy (see Kelly). For one thing the letter uses Seneca and Terence as examples of tragedy and comedy, respectively, whereas Dante might have been expected to use Virgil and himself as examples, as he does in the Comedy itself. But it hardly seems likely that in a paragraph where he was trying to show in what sense his work was a comedy he would define comedy as being a work like his. Another aspect of the definition that has disturbed some readers is the description of the language of comedy as “unstudied and lowly.” Surely Dante employs the most sublime heights to which his Italian vernacular could soar to describe the heavens of Paradise. Still the poem is in the vernacular (albeit the “illustrious vernacular” of which he speaks in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA) and in that sense may be “unstudied.” Further at least parts of the poem—the “gargoyle cantos” of the Inferno, for instance (Cantos 21–22)—employ a very “lowly” language that Dante would have known was inappropriate for tragedy. Nothing in the letter requires that the language be uniformly low throughout the comic text. One final point worth noting is the manner in which Dante discusses the celestial hierarchy in the part of his letter dealing with the first verses of the Paradiso. In considering God as the first cause and the first mover, he uses terms like rays of essence or being flowing from one level to the next, or from one intelligence to the next. In this he is consistent with the Neoplatonic views of the scale of existence so prominent in his Convivio.

FURTHER READING Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 3 vols. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947–1948. Available online. URL: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ aquinas/summa.html. Accessed July 20, 2006. Barolini, Teodolinda. “Demythologing Dante: For a ‘New Formalism’ in Dante Studies.” Quaderni d’italianistica 10, no. 1–2 (1989): 35–53. Brugnoli, Giorgio, ed. “Epistola XIII [a Cangrande].” In La letteratura italiana: storia e testi. Vol. 5. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1979, pt. 2:512–521; 558–643.

De monarchia Dante Alighieri. Monarchy and Three Political Letters. Introduction by Donald Nicholl. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954. Dronke, Peter. Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Hollander, Robert. Dante’s Epistle to Cangrande. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. Kelly, Henry Ansgar. Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Mazzoni, Francesco. “L’Epistola a Cangrande.” Rendiconti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche. Ser. 8, 10 (1955): 157–198. Moore, Edward. “The Genuineness of the Dedicatory Epistle to Can Grande.” Studies in Dante. 3rd series. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903, pp. 284–369. Scott, John A. Understanding Dante. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Toynbee, Paget, ed. The Letters of Dante. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.

De monarchia (Monarchy) (ca. 1309–1317?) Dante’s De monarchia is a political treatise on the necessity of a divinely ordained universal secular monarch, a concept the poet became devoted to as the result of the pontificate of his great enemy POPE BONIFACE VIII, whose persistent meddling in the temporal affairs of his native FLORENCE had resulted in Dante’s permanent exile from his home. Boniface’s thirst for worldly riches and power disgusted Dante, who embraced the ambitions of the new emperor, HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG, in his quest to reestablish Imperial power in Italy at the beginning of the second decade of the 14th century. Dante wrote his tract in Latin, indicating that he wanted a wide European audience for his contention that a supreme secular leader was necessary to balance the supreme spiritual authority of the pope. Dante was certainly in the midst of writing his Comedy when he composed De monarchia. He had left unfinished the other two major projects he had

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begun in exile (DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA and the CONVIVIO), but the final extant book of the Convivio is concerned in part with the ideal of universal monarchy, and perhaps Dante’s touching on that idea while writing the Convivio contributed to his decision to abandon the latter work in favor of De monarchia some time around 1308. That the two works were related somehow in Dante’s mind is further suggested by the fact that both treatises begin with an allusion to the same passage from ARISTOTLE’s Metaphysics, asserting that all human beings by nature desire the truth. But unlike the Convivio, De monarchia is a completed text, divided into three books that deal, respectively, with three questions that Dante poses in his second chapter: Is a universal monarch necessary for the good of the world? Was Rome’s achievement of that universal monarchy right and providential? And does Imperial power proceed directly from God or through his intermediary, the pope? Dante seems to have begun De monarchia, then, shortly after abandoning the Convivio and not long after beginning work on the INFERNO. It seems likely that the galvanizing event that set Dante writing his treatise was the advent of Henry VII of Luxembourg as Roman emperor. Named king of Germany (with the support of POPE CLEMENT V) in 1308 and Holy Roman Emperor in 1309, Henry announced that he would travel to Rome for his coronation (no emperor had done so since 1220). In effect this meant he intended to assert Imperial authority in Italy—a course that both the pope and the GUELPH party were determine to resist, but that Dante saw as the best hope for healing the internecine strife that plagued the country. Despite the resistance Henry crossed the Alps in 1310 with 5,000 men, was crowned in Rome in June 1312, and laid siege to the Guelph stronghold of Florence in September of that year. But Henry died of malaria in August 1313, cutting short his Imperial ambitions. According to GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO, Dante wrote De monarchia during Henry’s Italian campaign, but there is no reason to believe that Boccaccio was privy to anything more than the obvious fact that Henry sought to be the sort of monarch Dante was proposing in his text. But if De monarchia was written during Henry’s lifetime, why does

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Dante not mention him by name? He was certainly not shy about expressing his support for Henry in three political letters written during those years. Even in the Comedy Dante alludes to the emperor at least twice, in the Inferno as well as the PURGATORIO. Why should Dante be less demonstrative in De monarchia? It may be that intending his treatise to be a philosophical tract concerning universal truths, Dante deliberately chose to omit any topical references. However, he clearly alludes to Canto 19 of his PARADISO in Chapter 12 of De monarchia. Some suggest that this allusion is a scribal interpolation (i.e., an addition inserted by a scribe rather than the original author). Others think that while he probably wrote the text earlier, he revised it sometime around 1317. In any case it seems likely that Dante did not finalize the text of De monarchia until the late 1310s, years after Henry’s untimely death. Thus it is clear that Dante’s ideal did not live and die in the person of Henry of Luxembourg. He saw the monarchy as a universal need and believed that one day it must be achieved. To modern readers an ideal universal monarch, beyond the temptations of greed and power, whose only concern is for the welfare of humankind because he is motivated solely by caritas, is as unrealistic as Santa Claus. But for Dante, whose worldview was based on unquestionable universal precepts, including the notion that an omnipotent and absolutely good providence presided over human history, such a ruler was not only possible but imperative. Besides, Dante’s view is essentially an early assertion of the principle of separation of church and state, one of the tenets on which the American republic was founded— although the ideal of religious freedom that motivated America’s founders is a far cry from the dread of clerical abuse and greed that lay behind Dante’s argument. Still Dante’s faith did not save his treatise from official condemnation by church authorities. De monarchia was condemned as heretical in 1328 by Cardinal Bertrando el Poggetto and ordered burned in Bologna by POPE JOHN XXII. Still it proved relatively popular over the centuries, being translated into Italian twice before the end of the 14th century and going through two printings in the 16th.

It has not found a large audience among English speakers, but there is an excellent new translation by Prue Shaw. All citations in my text are from this edition.

BOOK 1 Synopsis Book 1 contains 16 chapters. In the first Dante begins his treatise with the statement that all men in whom God has instilled a desire for truth seek to benefit the common good and the interests of posterity. Accordingly, he says, he is writing this treatise to benefit posterity by addressing an issue that has not been dealt with sufficiently before: the issue of temporal monarchy. In Chapter 2 Dante defines the temporal monarchy as a single supreme authority over all persons in the physical world and then asks three questions concerning that authority: Is a temporal monarch necessary for the common good? Did the Romans wield that supreme authority legitimately? And does the temporal monarch derive his authority directly from God or through God’s vicar? He then goes on to indicate that his purpose is to present an argument concerning political matters based on what he calls “first principles,” not merely for the sake of philosophical understanding but in order to influence human actions on the basis of that understanding. In Chapter 3 alluding to Aristotle’s Ethics, Dante proposes to begin by determining the ultimate purpose of society as a whole, which he asserts is different from the purpose of a particular individual, family, city, or nation. This must be some faculty specific to human nature, not found in other created things. Dante identifies this as the understanding of things through the potential intellect (an Aristotelian term differentiating humans’ embodied intellect—which because of the nature of the body is sometimes inactive—from the pure and direct apprehension of angels). This potential intellect cannot be actualized completely in a single individual, but only through the collective power of the whole of human society, exercising its intellect and acting in accordance with that intellect. Since individual human beings think best in calm circumstances, Dante argues in Chapter 4,

De monarchia it follows that human society in general can best exercise its intellectual potential in times of peace. Universal peace, then, is the ideal state under which humans can fulfill their ultimate purpose, and this will be the “first principle” on which Dante will base his argument in Book 1. In Chapter 5 Dante returns to the three questions he broached in Chapter 2 and begins to address the first question. A temporal monarchy is necessary for the well-being of humanity, he asserts, and proceeds to prove his assertion with several arguments. First, citing the authority of Aristotle’s Politics, Dante declares that within a group of things directed to a common end, one member must serve as the leader to direct the others toward that end. As this is true in an individual (in whom reason acts as guide), it is also true of the family, city, kingdom, and, it follows, humanity as a whole. This leader is called “Emperor.” Dante supports this contention with two arguments based on the relationship of part to whole. A whole is the sum of its parts and is superior to any one of its parts. Since each constituent part of humanity (individuals, families, nations) requires a leader, then the whole of humanity must require one as well (Chapter 6). Similarly humankind itself is a constituent part of the cosmos, which is governed by its own sovereign monarch, God, and therefore should follow the natural pattern of the universe (Chapter 7). In Chapter 8 Dante argues that since God made human beings in his own image, humankind is happiest when it most resembles God. Since a chief characteristic of God is his unity, human beings are most in harmony with divine intentions for them when they are united, and united under a single sovereign. More philosophically Dante asserts in Chapter 9 (citing Aristotle’s Physics) that humankind is in its most ideal condition when it most resembles Heaven, which is the “father” of the race. In medieval Ptolomaic cosmology the heavens are moved by a single Prime Mover, the outermost sphere that turns all the others. A single world sovereign would most resemble this state. Now Dante moves into arguments concerning law. Citing Aristotle’s Metaphysics, he contends

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that disputes between equals must be settled justly by someone superior to both parties, and if both parties are monarchs, this can only be accomplished by a single sovereign (Chapter 10). Chapter 11 is a logically complex chapter focused on the proposition that the world is best ordered when governed by justice. Only a universal world sovereign can dispense impartial justice, since he will have the power necessary to enforce justice and a will uncorrupted by greed (since there is nothing for him to covet) and motivated by love (his concern being for all men’s welfare). Chapter 12 concerns arguments based on the idea of freedom. Freedom, the exercise of human free will, is the source of human happiness (as, Dante says, he has already asserted in his Paradiso 19, ll. 19–24). But true individual free will can exist perfectly only under a world emperor. In all other forms of government (tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule—which Dante, and Aristotle, equates with democracy) those in control are interested only in power and greed. True government is the servant of the people, ensuring that each may achieve self-fulfillment. Only the impartial emperor, motivated solely by charity, can assure this condition. In Chapter 13 Dante refutes the idea that a ruler might influence others through virtuous words but fail in virtuous actions. Only the universal monarch, freed from greed and interested only in justice, can best rule others. Dante devotes Chapter 14 to an argument based on the idea that efficiency is more acceptable to God than duplication of effort (since what is unnecessary or pointless displeases him). Since the world can be governed by a single ruler rather than more than one, it follows that it should be so governed. Dante clarifies in this chapter that the universal monarch should not be involved in the minute governing of all aspects of life, but only in larger matters applicable to all humankind. Thus, he says, the universal monarch is like the theoretical intellect, which frames the major premise or general principle in a deductive or syllogistic argument, while local rulers are like the practical intellect, which forms the minor premise of such an argument by applying the general principle to a specific case and then acts upon it.

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From here Dante moves to his final argument, based on Aristotle’s concept of unity, drawing particularly from the Metaphysics and the Ethics. He begins by relating being, unity, and goodness, asserting that “perfect being is perfect unity, and perfect unity is perfect goodness” (26). Concord, the agreement of many wills, is a kind of unity, and so a more perfect state for human society. Such concord can only occur when a single will—that of a universal monarch—guides and directs the collective wills of humankind. Book 1 ends as Dante connects all of his theoretical arguments to one historical event that, he believes, demonstrates the truth of his arguments in experience. Only once—during the reign of the universal emperor Augustus—was the whole world at peace. It was then that God chose to become incarnate in Jesus Christ, thus demonstrating his approval of that temporal condition. But the unity of that time has since been destroyed by greed, and Dante ends his first book with a direct address to the human race in general, chiding them for ignoring the lessons of universal principles, of experience, and of divine revelation. Commentary At the beginning of Book 1 Dante asks three questions: Is the universal monarchy necessary? Was the Roman Empire the true divinely ordained world monarchy? Does the emperor receive his authority directly from God or through an intermediary? Dante’s treatise will deal with each of these questions in successive books, beginning with the question of necessity in Book 1. Similarly in the last chapter of Book 1 Dante laments that humankind has not learned the lessons of the theoretical intellect, the practical intellect, or divine illumination—once again implying a threefold pattern to which his three books will conform. Thus Book 1 is concerned with the theoretical intellect, which forms arguments based upon universal principles. Indeed although Dante implies in his first chapter that he is addressing an issue that has not been dealt with sufficiently in the past, in fact his assertions that the Empire was divinely ordained and that a universal monarch was preferable to other

forms of government were not new (and were, in hindsight, perhaps even anachronistic in his own time). What was in fact original in Dante’s treatise was his reliance on precise formal Aristotelian logic to make his case. His method is uncompromisingly meticulous, deductively applying general principles to more specific cases in a series of careful syllogisms. Thus in Chapter 8, for example, Dante begins with the proposition that “every thing is in a good (indeed, ideal) state which is in harmony with the intention of the first mover, who is God” (12). This major premise is applied to the minor premise “It is God’s intention that every created thing should show forth His likeness in so far as its own nature can receive it” (12). From this the inevitable logical conclusion is that all things, including human beings, are in their ideal state when they most resemble God. Dante continues in this vein, turning the conclusion of the first syllogism into the major premise of the second: “So mankind is in a good (indeed, ideal) state when, to the extent that its nature allows, it resembles God” (13), he begins. This proposition is applied to the minor premise “mankind most closely resembles God when it is most a unity” (13), leading to the inevitable conclusion that mankind is in its ideal state when it is in a state of unity, which can only occur under a temporal world monarch. This precise deductive method may seem stilted and foreign to modern readers, partly because it is no longer possible to find acknowledged universal principles with which everyone agrees. Thus we are far more likely to argue inductively, from experience to generalizations, rather than vice versa. To the Scholastic philosophers of Dante’s day, however (such as Dante’s own beloved SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS), trained in Aristotelian logic, such a method was almost second nature. It is not surprising then that Dante’s major sources for De monarchia included Aristotle’s Politics, his Metaphysics, and especially his Ethics (in a translation by William of Moerbeke), as well as Aquinas’s commentary on the Ethics. He also used Pope John XXI’s treatise on Aristotelian logic, the Summule logicales (ca. 1250), a textbook on Aristotelian logic used in European universities for three centuries.

De monarchia Dante’s reliance on this esteemed ecclesiastical source did not save his treatise from official proscription by the church, however. It was not only that one of his chief motives in writing De monarchia was to argue that the pope should have no authority in secular matters. Dante’s text was also attacked in 1327 by the Dominican Guido Vernani, who claimed Dante was an Averroist heretic, after which POPE JOHN XXII ordered copies of De monarchia burned in the public marketplace in Bologna. Subsequently De monarchia was placed on the Vatican’s list of forbidden books until the 19th century. This charge of Averroism was based on Dante’s use of the concept of the “possible intellect” (in reference to which he cites the Muslim philosopher AVERROËS in Chapter 3 of his text). In his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima Averroës had distinguished between two aspects of the human soul: the active intellect and the passive intellect. Dante refers to these two parts in his treatise as the theoretical and the practical intellect. Averroës believed that the possible intellect died with the body—only the active intellect was immortal. But he believed that the active intellect was the same for all humankind. The logical conclusion was that Averroës denied personal immortality, and the church therefore forbade the teaching of his doctrines. Scholastic philosophers, however, such as Aquinas himself, accepted Averroës’s distinctions without accepting his conclusions. The theoretical intellect, which grasps general principles, is for Dante apparently a part of all human individuals. The possible (or practical) intellect is, for Dante, the one trait that most distinguishes human beings from God’s other creations. As intellect it puts humans above the animals. As the means through which intellect deals with the external world using the tools of a physical body, it distinguishes human beings from the angels, who in their spiritual form perceive truth directly from the mind of God. Human beings, on the other hand, must reason matters through to find truth. They must apply the universal principles as conceived by the theoretical intellect to the experiences of the physical world, a task best performed by the practical intellect in a condition of peace. For this reason, Dante argues,

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a universal monarch is necessary: to keep the peace so that human beings can better use their unique reasoning abilities. This argument, too, no doubt seems quaint to the point of naïveté to contemporary readers. The modern world, since the time of Hegel, has conceived of intellectual progress and new ideas as the result of struggle, of responding to challenges. Still many in our contemporary world do recognize the advantages that may be obtained through meditation, and so may be able to understand the predisposition of people who in significant numbers opted to spend their lives behind cloister walls, devoted to the contemplative life that many—Dante included—considered superior to the active life. One final point in Book 1 worth commenting upon is Dante’s reference in Chapter 12 to the fifth canto of his Paradiso. This allusion is important in the controversy over the date of De monarchia. Scholarly opinion has usually held that Dante must have written De monarchia between 1309 and 1311—the period during which the emperor Henry VII attempted to assert his historic Imperial rights in Italy. Dante had enthusiastically welcomed Henry’s expedition, as evidenced by three political epistles he wrote at the time. The reference to the Paradiso, however, which could not have been made much before 1318 or so, seems to belie this earlier assumption. Certainly Henry’s expedition may have provided the initial impetus for Dante’s project in De monarchia. But that enthusiasm must have cooled after Henry’s untimely death in August 1313. Of course it is always possible that the reference to the Paradiso is an addition made by a scribe—none of the manuscripts of De monarchia is contemporary with Dante—but it may be more likely that Dante was inspired to begin his text sometime during Henry’s career but completed it later, after cooler reflection, for the text of De monarchia does not read like a polemical topical tract (as Dante’s epistles on this subject do). It mentions no specific individuals, whether Imperial or ecclesiastical. Rather De monarchia is carefully and coolly reasoned, like something produced after a period of quiet, peaceful reflection—the product of that intellectual exercise Dante claims to be the highest function of the human soul.

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BOOK 2 Synopsis In Book 2 Dante addresses the second question raised in the second chapter of his opening book: Did the Roman people achieve world domination through divine right? In his first chapter (of 11) Dante declares that at one time he thought that Rome achieved its empire simply through force of superior arms. Now, he says, he has come to understand that Roman supremacy was achieved through divine providence and sets out to prove this fact in order to stop petty kings and princes from resisting Imperial power and to demonstrate to the people that they need not be subject to the yoke of these petty princes, whom he calls “usurpers.” In the second chapter Dante again reasons from “first principles,” asserting that what is right in the world, including human society, is that which happens in accordance with God’s will. In the third chapter he sets out to prove that the Romans ruled by right. It is appropriate that the noblest race should rule over others, Dante says, and the Roman people are the noblest. He proceeds to support the latter point by reference to Virgil and LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS), who trace Roman lineage to Aeneas of Troy, and continues to cite Virgil for proof of the Trojans’ noble lineage—traced to roots in all three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe). Aeneas’s nobility is also supported by the nobility of his three wives, who also embody the nobility of three continents—Creusa (daughter of King Priam) of Asia, DIDO (queen of Carthage) of Africa, and Lavinia (daughter of King Latinus) of Europe. A second argument that Rome’s world domination was God’s will is introduced in Chapter 4: Rome’s power was achieved by the aid of miracles, Dante claims, and thus (since only God can perform miracles) must be divinely ordained. Dante cites Livy and others in relating several miracles in Rome’s history: A shield fell from Heaven during a sacrifice being performed by Rome’s second king, Numa Pompilius. A goose warned the Romans of an impending Gaulish attack on the Capitol. Hannibal’s army was confounded by a hailstorm, preventing his conquest of Rome. The Roman prisoner Cloelia broke her bonds and swam across the

Tiber during the siege of Porsenna. All the miracles are signs of God’s favor. In the long fifth chapter Dante offers a third argument validating Roman power. If one’s goal is the common good, then one is doing God’s will, and Dante demonstrates that Rome had the good of the community in mind in its conquests. The suppression of greed and the establishment of peace in the empire are evidence of this, Dante claims. He cites MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO to show that the Romans’ intent was protection of their allies, rather than domination. Dante follows this with a series of individual Roman examples of selfless public service. These include Cincinnatus, called from the plow to command an army, who relinquished his office and returned to the plow when his task was complete. Fabritius scorned payment for his service on behalf of the republic. Camillus accepted unjust exile rather than move against the state. BRUTUS sentenced his own sons to death for collusion with the enemy. Mutius burned his own hand after failing to assassinate the king of Etruria, frightening the king with Roman valor. The Decii gave their lives to save the community. CATO OF UTICA killed himself rather than live under a dictator. Thus on the evidence of these examples the Romans as a whole had the common good as their goal. The Roman Empire is therefore divinely ordained—and must be the only empire so ordained, because logically nature would not create two different things for the same purpose. Chapter 6 is particularly important, being the central chapter of Book 2 and, accordingly, of the entire treatise. In it Dante places human society and purpose in the context of cosmic order. Nature orders all things, and this cosmic order is good and right. For the universe as a whole to achieve its intended purpose, the order of human society must be preserved, and this must be accomplished by a people ordained by nature to rule. Citing Aristotle, Dante asserts as well that other peoples are ordained to be ruled, and since this is just, the Romans were justified in using force to bring this about. That Rome is nature’s choice for this task Dante proves by citing two passages from Virgil, in which both Jove and Anchises prophesy the coming empire.

De monarchia Now Dante begins a more elaborate argument concerning the question of human beings’ ability to discern the will of God. In Chapter 7 he enumerates several ways that God reveals his judgment in the Scriptures and in classical literature, involving either direct revelation by God (either spontaneously or in answer to prayer, directly or by sign) or through some test, either by lot or contest. Two types of contests in which Dante is most interested are a combat between champions and a race between competing athletes. These two means become the bases for his arguments over the next two chapters. Dante assumes that God determines the outcome of an athletic competition such as a race and asserts that in the much larger arena of world domination, God must necessarily have determined the winner of the race to rule the world. Rome was the winner of that race, the only civilization ever to achieve the goal. He cites the failure of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Persians to complete the race and briefly focuses on ALEXANDER THE GREAT, who, Dante says, was struck down at the height of his power, at the very time he was negotiating the surrender of Rome—clear proof, for Dante, of God’s providential favor toward Rome. Thus their ultimate victory is the demonstration that the Romans ruled with the approval of God. In his lengthy Chapter 9 Dante uses the common medieval notion that a trial by combat reveals God’s will, as God necessarily favors the victor. It is important that such a trial be undertaken only as a last resort, and only by combatants concerned only for justice. In such cases God is present and justice will triumph. Dante says that those going to battle for justice should follow the example of Pyrrhus, the Hellenic king of Macedon in the third century B.C.E. who refused to ransom Roman prisoners since his fight was not for wealth. The victories won by the Roman people, Dante claims, were all trial by combat. He gives the example of Aeneas’s fight with Turnus at the beginning of Roman history that established the Trojan right to settle in Italy. There follows a brief history of Rome, drawn mainly from Livy (Titus Livius), LUCAN (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS), and PAULUS OROSIUS, in which Dante enumerates the Roman struggles

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against the Albans, the Sabines, and the Samnites and asserts that in all cases they were trials by combat, with God favoring the justice of Roman supremacy. The later wars against the Greeks and the Carthaginians for imperial domination Dante also frames as trial by combat and thus concludes that Roman supremacy was earned by right as God’s will. In Chapter 10 Dante moves from philosophical and historical argument to arguments based on the Christian faith. He acknowledges that many contemporary church authorities deny the authority of the Empire (and in this he refers to the contemporary Holy Roman Empire, which he sees as the direct and legitimate heir of classical Rome). These prelates, however, are the same ones who out of greed devour the substance of the church and ignore the church’s poor. He then presents his own argument. Citing the Gospel of Luke, Dante argues that Christ made the choice to be born under an edict issued by the Roman emperor Augustus. In so doing, Dante argues, Christ acknowledged the legitimate authority of the emperor. Dante continues in Chapter 11 with a second argument from Christian faith. Christ’s death on the cross was suffered as the just punishment of ADAM’s sin, in order to free all humankind from that burden and open the way to salvation. But just punishment can only take place under an authorized judge, Dante contends, and in the case of Christ this judge must have legitimate jurisdiction over all humankind, since the sin had affected all. Thus Pilate, who represented the emperor, represented a world emperor recognized by God himself. Dante ends Book 2 condemning church prelates for resisting Imperial power and lamenting the alleged Donation of CONSTANTINE THE GREAT for weakening the empire. Commentary Although Dante’s view that history moves toward a particular end that is good and right is in some ways similar to that of Hegel and even Marx, still to a contemporary reader Dante’s argument for the divinely ordained hegemony of Rome seems almost ludicrous in its naïveté and idealism. Although it is presented with the same scrupulous regard for

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the laws of syllogistic logic, the case in Book 2 requires the presentation of concrete evidence from Roman history to demonstrate the truth of Dante’s premises. Essentially Dante relies on the testimony of the Roman writers, particularly Livy, Lucan, and his beloved Virgil, in order to prove that the Romans are the world’s noblest race, Roman motives were always pure and did not involve greed or self-interest, and that God sent miracles to ensure the Roman conquest of the world. It seems never to have occurred to him that Roman authors may be biased. But in this Dante is simply a man of his time. To an early 14th-century European classical Rome was the high point of world civilization. Dante’s favorite writers—most notably Virgil—were characterized by an unquestionable personal integrity. This is clear in the fourth canto of the Inferno, where the great classical poets form a circle representing the highest human achievement possible without divine revelation. The fact that in that scene they welcome Dante among their number suggests not only that Dante thought himself worthy to be among their number (ll. 100–102), but also that he thought of those poets as like him—uncompromising in their integrity and love of truth. That Dante believed in what they said is no surprise. To a Christian audience Dante’s attitude toward Rome may also recall the scriptural viewpoint toward Israel. The Old Testament emphasizes God’s role in the history of Israel, and the New Testament views the history of Israel as a long historic preparation for the coming of Christ. The scriptural citations Dante scatters through Book 2 also suggest something about the possible biblical inspiration for Dante’s view of Roman history. Another Christian source to which Dante was deeply indebted was the Historiarum adversus Paganos libri VII (“History against the Pagans in seven books”), written by the fifth-century Spanish priest Paulus Orosius. Orosius had first emphasized the significance of Christ’s birth during the peaceful reign of Augustus, a point that Dante turns into a legitimization of Roman world domination. In this Dante is directly opposed to Orosius’s friend and contemporary SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, who contrasted the city of Rome to the City of God

in his most famous work and claimed that Christians were citizens of the latter, and only pilgrims in the former—a view that remained that of orthodox Christians for some time. Thus Dante’s second book is quite original in its view of the relationship between Christianity and the empire. As Dante sees it, that relationship was badly marred and perverted by the Donation of Constantine. Book 2 closes with an allusion to this act, when Dante says, “O glorious Ausonia [i.e., Italy], if only that man who weakened your empire had never been born, or at least had never been led astray by his own pious intentions” (62). “That man” is the emperor Constantine, who, according to medieval tradition, had ceded the entire western half of the empire to the church in gratitude for POPE SYLVESTER I’s curing him of leprosy. The Donation, of course, was a myth, and the written document purported to be Constantine’s a forgery, but that was not revealed until the 15th century. Dante believed in the Donation and deplored it, for it was that act that he blamed for first putting secular power into the hands of the pope, and thus inappropriately drawing papal attention from spiritual matters and initiating the corruption of the church. Dante makes similar comments about Constantine and the Donation in Inferno 19 and Paradiso 20. Structurally this second book is intended to be the one devoted to the practical intellect. Whereas Book 1 dealt with the question of universal monarchy in the abstract, Book 2 looks at the universal monarchy as experienced in the world. One way to look at the three-part structure of De monarchia is to see it as following the form of the syllogisms that Dante uses so effectively throughout the text. The first book, focusing on the theoretical intellect, corresponds to the major premise of a syllogism. This second book, centering as it does on the practical intellect, corresponds in turn to the minor premise of the syllogism—the premise that applies the generalization to a specific case, in this instance the historical position of the Roman Empire. Looking forward, then, the third book must correspond to the conclusion of the syllogism. The syllogism implied by the three books of De monarchia might be expressed something like this: The well-being of

De monarchia the world requires a (divinely sanctioned) supreme world ruler (Book 1). The Roman Empire is a divinely sanctioned supreme world ruler (Book 2). The conclusion therefore must be that the wellbeing of the world requires the Imperial rule of the Roman Empire. This will be the underlying assumption of the final book, though the main focus will be on whether the divine authorization of that Empire is directly from God or from some intermediary.

BOOK 3 Synopsis In his final book in 16 chapters Dante deals with what he calls the “two great lights”—the emperor and the pope—focusing in particular on the question of the source of the emperor’s authority. In Chapter 1 he expresses some concern that this last book may arouse some enmity against him but takes comfort in the words of Daniel, whom God protected in the lions’ den. Dante begins his argument in Chapter 2 by asserting the fundamental principle that “what is contrary to nature’s intention is against God’s will” (64). Before moving beyond this principle, in Chapter 3 Dante cautions that there are three kinds of people who, moved by passion rather than reason, would oppose the truth he is exploring in this book. The first group comprises the pope and other church officials, who are, he says, motivated by genuine concern for the church and not merely by pride. The second group consists of completely self-concerned churchmen who despise the idea of sovereign authority. The last group consists of the decretalists—the canon lawyers (from whose ranks Boniface had risen) who most vehemently supported the pope’s temporal power. These draw their arguments purely from decretals—decrees and laws of the church—which they believe superior to any other law or argument. Against these Dante asserts the greater authority of the Scriptures and the priority of the ecumenical councils of the church—at Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451)—at which he contends that Christ himself was present. He also affirms the greater importance of the inspired writings of the church fathers, particularly Saint Augustine. These decretals, based on church

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tradition, are authoritative because the church stands behind them. The church itself existed long before its decretals and therefore certainly does not derive its authority from them, as the church’s canon lawyers seem to believe. Neither these nor the self-interested hypocrites in the second group can be reasonably argued with, so Dante says that his argument is aimed at the first group—those whose objections to the idea of supreme authority arise purely from a genuine concern for the church’s welfare. In Chapter 4 Dante begins to refute the arguments put forward by these zealous churchmen who believe that the emperor’s authority depends upon the church. In Chapters 4 through 9 he addresses opposing arguments drawn from Scripture. He begins by noting various ways of refuting deductive arguments, as listed in Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations. He then cites Saint Augustine (City of God and De doctrina christiana), who cautioned that in interpreting the scripture allegorically, one might err by seeing ALLEGORY where none was intended, or by misinterpreting the writer’s intended allegory. With these tools Dante attacks the first of the church’s scriptural arguments. In Genesis 1 God creates the “two great lights,” the sun and the moon. This was commonly taken to refer to the church and the Empire, and as the moon derived its light from the sun, so the emperor derived his power from the church. Dante argues that such an interpretation is illogical. Since neither the pope nor the emperor would have been necessary in an unfallen world, and since God created the sun and moon on the fourth day but did not create man until the sixth, the two great lights could not have been intended to prefigure something that was not yet necessary. Further even if the analogy between the lights and the two major earthly powers were intended, the sun is not the source of the moon’s light but only increases the moon’s efficiency; therefore the point seems to be that the sun augments the moon’s power, but that the moon does not depend on the sun for its existence. Dante continues his refutation of allegorical readings of scripture in Chapter 5. Here he considers the argument, based on Genesis 29.34–35, that Levi and Judah prefigure ecclesiastical and Imperial

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authority, and that because Levi’s birth was prior to Judah’s, the church has priority over the Empire in authority. Dante says he could easily deny the allegory behind the major premise of the argument but chooses instead to refute the minor premise, pointing out the obvious truth that birth and authority are not the same thing. In Chapter 6 Dante deals with a scriptural interpretation even closer to the point he is arguing. In the first book of Samuel (chapters 10, 15, and 16) Samuel places Saul on the throne of Israel and later removes him. The church would argue that this proves Samuel, as the vicar of God, had divine sanction for installing and removing temporal monarchs. Thus in the same way (they would argue) the pope (as God’s vicar) should wield such power over emperors. Dante refutes this by insisting that Samuel was not God’s vicar at all—he was rather delivering the message of God, and as messenger he had authority only for the single purpose of deposing Saul. This is not the same as a vicar, Dante insists, to whom jurisdiction is granted and who makes decisions according to his own interpretation of the laws. Dante deals with the first argument from the New Testament in Chapter 7. In Matthew 2.1–13 the magi take frankincense and gold to the Christchild, symbolizing Christ’s authority over both spiritual and temporal matters. Therefore according to the church the pope as Christ’s vicar has authority over both spiritual and temporal things. Dante accepts the symbolism of the passage but denies that Christ’s vicar is the same as Christ. As the successor of SAINT PETER, the pope does not possess the same powers as Christ any more than Peter himself did. In Chapter 8 Dante begins to consider two New Testament texts central to papal authority. Here he deals with the power of the keys bestowed on Peter in Matthew 16.19, where Christ gives Peter the keys of the kingdom and tells him that “whatsoever” he binds or loosens on earth will be bound or loosened in Heaven. The popes argued that this power included the laws of the Empire. But Dante argues that the term whatsoever must not be taken in an absolute sense—if that were the meaning, then the pope could absolve an unrepentant sin-

ner, as God himself cannot. Thus the whatsoever is limited only to the office of the keys. As for the passage in Luke 22.38, where Peter says he will have “two swords” always with him, the papal interpretation was that these swords represented temporal and spiritual power. In Chapter 9 Dante refutes this interpretation in two ways. First, he shows that it is taken out of context, arguing that it is part of a conversation at the Last Supper in which Jesus tells his disciples that they may need swords (one sword per disciple), and other things as well, from now on since he will no longer be with them. Second, Dante says, the remark is typical of Peter in its impulsiveness and unreflective simplicity and therefore should not be viewed as having a deeper meaning. Having refuted the church’s arguments from Scripture, Dante turns his attention to two historical arguments in Chapters 10 and 11. Chapter 10 deals with the Donation of Constantine, alluded to at the end of Book 1. Though he accepts as historical fact Constantine’s ceding of the Western Empire to papal control, he disputes its legitimacy. Constantine, Dante says, could not legitimately perform an act that was in conflict with his own office, and since his office was that of world monarch, he could not legitimately give away his own sovereignty. To do so would also be against human right (since human right requires a single world monarch, as he argued earlier), and it would destroy the very thing that makes the emperor what he is. Furthermore the pope could not legitimately accept such a gift, Dante argues, since doing so would be directly opposed to Christ’s instructions to the disciples in Matthew 10.9–10, where they are told to provide neither gold, silver, nor brass in their purses. The only thing that could legitimately pass between emperor and pope, according to Dante, was Constantine’s giving a patrimony over to the guardianship of the pope, who was to administer it for the benefit of the church’s poor. The second historical argument holds that since in exchange for Charlemagne’s aid against the Longobards Pope Hadrian crowned Charlemagne emperor of Rome, it follows that all emperors thereafter must be defenders of the church and crowned by the pope. In a very brief chapter Dante

De monarchia dismisses this argument, asserting that “the usurping of a right does not establish a right” (84) and pointing out that since Otto I restored Leo VIII to the papal seat after his deposition by John XII, a similar argument could be made that the pope’s authority depended on the emperor. The final argument for temporal papal sovereignty is an argument from reason, which Dante considers in some detail in Chapter 12. This is a complex argument based on the 10th book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. All members of a given species, Aristotle says, may be measured by their relationship to a single ideal member of that species. For human beings this must be a man, and according to the church, it must be the pope, since the pope cannot be measured against any other man, even the emperor. Dante refutes this position by demonstrating that the papal argument commits the “accidental fallacy”—that is, it confuses substance with accident. What Aristotle was discussing was the substantive idea of the human—what is essential in human nature. What makes a pope or emperor is authority, which in Scholastic terms is an “accident”—that is, a perceptible quality but not part of the essence of object. Put simply, one need not have authority to be a human being. Nor can pope and emperor be measured against one another (though both are in positions of authority), since their functions are completely different. They must be measured against God himself (embodiment of all authority), or against some lesser being whose distinctive feature is authority. In Chapter 13 having refuted all opposing arguments, Dante begins to mount his own case for the emperor’s independence of papal authority. His first argument is one of priority. Imperial authority, he says, was in existence before there was a church, and long before the pope had any power. Therefore it is chronologically impossible that the emperor derived his power from the pope. Christ himself, by his birth and death, sanctioned Imperial power, as did Saint Paul in a number of passages where he relies on the judgment of Caesar (e.g., Acts 27.24). Dante even uses the Donation of Constantine for his own purposes here, pointing out that if Emperor Constantine had no authority, then his donation could not be legitimate.

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Dante’s second argument (Chapter 14) is that the church cannot have received the authority to appoint the emperor from any legitimate source. Such authority could only have been gained from God, from the church itself, from the emperor, or from the majority of humankind as a whole. God’s law, Dante asserts, is fully contained in the Old and New Testaments, and he finds nothing in those Scriptures that instructed priests to become involved in temporal matters—rather the Scriptures advise the opposite. Nor could the church have legitimately granted itself this authority, since it could not give what it did not possess in the first place. Nor could the emperor have granted such authority, as Dante has already demonstrated in his discussion of the Donation of Constantine in Chapter 10. As for the majority of humankind, Dante points out that no one in Asia or Africa would support the church’s claim to this authority, and the majority of Europeans would reject it as well. He says there is no need to provide further proof for something so self-evident. Dante makes his final argument in Chapter 15. Here he asserts that it is against the very nature of the church to have authority in temporal matters. Using terms from Scholastic philosophy, Dante explains that the “intelligible form”—the true essence—of the church is the life of Christ. Since Christ specifically abjured worldly power (when he told Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world in John 18.36), it would be contrary to the very nature of the church for its priests and prelates not to do the same. In the final chapter of De monarchia Dante states that while he has proved that the authority of the emperor is not from the pope, he still must prove that it is directly from God. He begins with the medieval notion of the dual nature of humanity (body and mind). As he had emphasized in Chapter 3 of Book 1, every nature has an ultimate end. Human nature must have two ends—one spiritual and one physical—embodied in the heavenly and the earthly paradise. In striving for the heavenly paradise, human beings must follow the Scriptures and practice the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. In seeking the goal, we have the pope as our guide. As for the earthly paradise, it is

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attained by following the teachings of philosophy and practicing the moral and intellectual virtues. Our guide in the quest for worldly happiness is the emperor. Both reason and the revelation of the Holy Spirit show us these truths, though human greed may cloud our vision of them. Only God, who sees all the cosmos in a single glance, can provide for the harmony necessary for happiness in human society, and therefore only God can choose the emperor—the German “electors” merely proclaim God’s will. Dante concludes his work by revisiting the three questions with which he started (Is a universal monarch necessary for human happiness? Is the Roman Emperor the divinely ordained universal sovereign? Does the emperor receive his authority directly from God or through an intermediary?) and asserts that he has sufficiently dealt with each question. He then makes a controversial final statement: The pope is indeed Christ’s vicar, Dante admits, and therefore the emperor owes him respect, like that paid by an elder son to his father. He can thus better rule the temporal world, over which God—”who alone is ruler over all things spiritual and temporal” (94)—has placed him. Commentary Just as in a syllogism the first two premises build up to and support the conclusion, which is the ultimate point of the argument, so in De monarchia the first two books lead up to and reinforce the argument of Book 3, which is the thesis of the entire treatise: The emperor owes his sovereignty to no one but God, from whom alone he receives his authority as universal world sovereign. In this book more than in the previous two Dante makes a direct attack on some of the cornerstones of the papal apologists’ arguments concerning the temporal authority of the Roman pontiff. These include the popular allegorical interpretation of the “two great lights” of Genesis 1 (Chapter 5), which had been employed by both Boniface VIII and Clement V; the argument concerning the keys of the kingdom given to Peter and his successors in Matthew 16, which the popes had interpreted as applying to secular as well as spiritual matters; and, most important, the Donation of Constantine, without which there could be no legal or his-

torical justification for papal interference in secular affairs. Dante systematically destroys these and all other arguments in a tour de force lesson in deductive reasoning. In Chapter 4 of Book 3, relying on Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations, he reviews every sort of refutation possible in syllogistic argument (involving either false premises or faulty logic) and then, using Saint Augustine’s City of God and On Christian Doctrine, he describes the ways in which readers misinterpret the mystical or allegorical sense of Scripture (either by misunderstanding the allegory or by looking for allegory where none was intended). He proceeds to use these tools to demolish every conceivable argument for temporal papal sovereignty. Certainly there are occasions when he has specific facts wrong—in his discussion of Charlemagne in Chapter 11 he maintains that Charlemagne was crowned emperor by Pope Hadrian when in fact it was Pope Leo III who had done the deed—but these errors do nothing to undermine the sound logic behind his arguments. His command of logic and of the Scriptures is confident and intimidating in this book, and no formal rebuttal to his arguments was ever attempted—though of course, as mentioned earlier, the treatise was condemned as heretical in 1327 and was banned by the church for centuries. Looking back at De monarchia from a 700-year vantage point, we may find it easy to fault Dante for being anachronistic. Certainly the real power of the Holy Roman Emperor was negligible after the death of FREDERICK II OF SWABIA in 1250. The ambitions of the individual German princes who formed the electors, and the powerful sectarian divisions of the Italian cities, would make unity impossible in those countries until the 19th century. The emergence of the nation-state that followed the imminent Hundred Years War in France and England would make any idea of a universal monarch unfeasible. Yet the ideals of peace and prosperity through unity and cooperation are ideals still cherished in our own time, as such experiments as the United Nations and the European Union demonstrate. Nor do countries under theocratic political systems fare well among the contemporary community of nations. Thus while Dante may have

Quaestio de Aqua et Terra been somewhat out of step with what was to be the immediate political future of Europe, the spirit behind the ideals he argued may still resonate with us today.

FURTHER READING Dante Alighieri. Monarchia. Translated and edited by Prue Shaw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. Monarchia. Edited by P. G. Ricci. Edizione Nazionale delle Opera di Dante Alighieri a cura della Societá Dantesca Italiana, vol. V. Milan: Mondadori, 1965. ———. Monarchy and Three Political Letters. Introduction by Donald Nicholl. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954. Davis, Charles Till. “Dante and the Empire.” In Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 67–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. Dante and the Idea of Rome. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. D’Entrèves, Alessandro Passerin. Dante as a Political Thinker. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. Gilson, Etienne. Dante the Philosopher. Translated by David Moore. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1949. Mancusi-Ungaro, Donna. Dante and the Empire. New York: P. Lang, 1987.

Quaestio de aqua et terra (A Question about Water and Earth) (1320) Perhaps Dante’s most atypical work is the Quaestio de aqua et terra, which is a Latin philosophical (by which Dante would have meant scientific) treatise that is essentially the written text of a lecture he declares he delivered in VERONA on January 20, 1320. He says at the end of the treatise that he gave the lecture before the assembled clergy of Verona, under the rule of his old patron CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA. But he says at the beginning of the treatise that it was delivered in response to a discussion that had begun

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but remained unresolved when he was in Mantua. The question, as he puts it in the treatise, was “Whether water, in its own sphere, that is in its natural circumference, was in any part higher than the earth which emerges from the waters, and which we commonly call the habitable quarter.” Put in more contemporary terms, the question concerned the perfect symmetry of God’s created universe: The universe was conceived by Aristotelian philosophy as a set of spheres within spheres, all perfectly concentric and all revolving around the same center, which was the center of the earth. Beneath the moon there should be concentric spheres of fire, air, water, and earth— thus all of the earth should be beneath the sphere of water. Yet in the medieval conception of the world, the northern hemisphere contains a great landmass (Europe, Asia, and North Africa) that projects from the sphere of water. How can our experience be brought into line with ARISTOTLE? Dante, calling himself “least amongst true students of philosophy,” tackles the problem (previously considered by ALBERTUS MAGNUS among others) in this little treatise. Dante’s interest in the physics of his time, demonstrated to such a broad extent in his descriptions of the various spheres of the PARADISO, shows itself in its purest form in this text. The text was first printed in Venice in 1508 and reprinted in Naples in 1576. The authenticity of this 88-paragraph treatise has often been questioned by Dante scholars, partly because no manuscript of the text has ever been found, and partly because no public record exists of the disputation in Verona where Dante is supposed to have delivered this speech. The text, however, displays a fascination with the physical laws of the universe with which Dante is known to have been keenly interested. Besides, if the text is in fact the production of a 16th-century forger, it would be very difficult for such a person to keep the text free of anachronisms—the discovery of land in the southern and the western hemispheres, for example, which had occurred within a few decades of the text’s publication. Besides the Quaestio is composed in a Scholastic form and style that would have been completely out of fashion in the

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early 16th century. Indeed the majority of scholars today seem willing to admit the authenticity of the Quaestio de aqua et terra. Citations of the text in the following are to the Philip Wicksteed translation, available on the Princeton Dante Web site. Synopsis Dante begins the treatise by enumerating the five arguments that had been raised in Mantua against his contention that the sphere of water was nowhere higher than the continental masses. The first of these held that if two circumferences have a common center, one must be higher than the other. The second held that a nobler substance deserves a nobler place, and water is nobler than earth, so it must be higher. The third maintained that a belief that contradicts the senses must be false, and the idea earth was higher than water contradicted the senses. Fourth, if the circumference of the earth were higher than that of water, there would be no water on top of the earth. Fifth, since water is affected by the Moon, water behaves eccentrically, as can only happen if the water is higher than the earth. Dante now moves on to demonstrate that despite these arguments to the contrary, it is impossible for the water, in any part of its sphere, to be higher than the continents that emerge from it. Common sense tells us this, for water always runs down to the sea from wherever it is on land. Water moves downward naturally. Furthermore since water is liquid, it cannot be bound anywhere by itself, and such a boundary would be necessary to prevent the sea from overrunning the land. Water, he says, cannot have a hump—it cannot be eccentric. In a characteristically Neoplatonic explanation Dante goes on to argue that because universal nature intends that all potential forms of matter must be actualized in the physical universe, and since many of these forms would need to exist on dry land, the virtue of Heaven fulfills the intent of universal nature by overriding the simple nature of the earth and causing dry land to emerge from the sea. He describes the emergent land as being shaped as a half-moon and lying in the northern

hemisphere, 180 degrees of longitude across and 67 degrees of latitude wide. Dante now proceeds to ask what the final and efficient cause of this emergent land is. He determines that it cannot be the earth itself; nor can it be the water, air, or fire. The cause must lie in the heavens. Because all of the planetary spheres and the Primum Mobile itself are uniform, there should be no reason for them to lift the earth more on one side than on another. He thus determines that the sphere of the fixed stars, with its various and diverse parts, must be the cause of the asymmetric formation of land above the waters of the earth. Dante refers to the book of Genesis, where in 1.9 God commands that the waters of the earth be gathered, and the dry land appear, and asserts that it was at that point that the sphere of the stars was given the power to act upon the earth as it has. In his last nine paragraphs Dante refutes the five earlier opposing arguments he had raised. The first and second arguments (concerning concentric circles and relative natures of earth and water), he says, fail to consider the irregularity of the “hump” of earth that forms the protruding continents. The third argument, based on the contradiction of the senses, he calls fallacious, since the senses can lie. He also finds that the fourth argument is based on a falsity, since it would assume that water rises to the tops of mountains as water. The fifth argument, that because water imitates the orbit of the Moon, it must be eccentric as the moon is, is based on a false analogy, Dante says, since it assumes that simply because water imitates the Moon in one respect, it must do so in all. Here Dante concludes his treatise, noting that he had delivered it in a public disputation at Verona on Sunday, January 20, 1320. Commentary The question Dante deals with in this treatise may seem self-evident and even trivial to modern readers, but it was clearly a matter of some weight in his own time, since it had implications for Aristotelian physics and for Christian theology as well. Antonio Pelacani, a contemporary of Dante’s who taught in Bologna and in Verona, had written that all water on earth, including the oceans, was contained in valleys or other depressions in the solid earth. Further Pelacani had gone on to posit the existence

Rime of other continental blocks in the southern hemisphere. Such conclusions (accurate as they would prove in reality) contradict both Aristotelian physics (which held that by nature the sphere of water must be greater than the sphere of earth) and Genesis, which states that God gathered the dry land into one place. Dante, who had spent some of his exile in both Bologna and Verona, may well have been acquainted with Pelacani; in any case he was probably aware of Pelacani’s opinions on this topic. One difficulty scholars have pointed out in the treatise concerns Dante’s main point, that the influence of the sphere of the fixed stars had caused the land to bulge out from the sea in the northern hemisphere. Some 10 years earlier Dante had written in INFERNO 34, ll. 121–126, that the fall of Lucifer through the southern hemisphere had caused all the land in the south to move into the northern hemisphere, leaving only Mount Purgatory. Obviously the scientific explanation in the Quaestio has nothing in common with this earlier story, put into the mouth of Virgil. This difference led the Italian scholar Bruno Nardi to question the genuineness of the Quaestio. But it would not be unusual for Dante to change his views on the explanation of natural phenomena—as he does, for example, in his understanding of the cause of spots on the moon between CONVIVIO 2.13.9 and PARADISO 2. Besides, as Scott points out (350), Dante is writing a scientific treatise here, not a theological one, and Dante was scrupulous about the methods of philosophical or scientific inquiry, so only arguments from experience or philosophical authority were admissible. Lucifer’s fall could only be known through revelation.

FURTHER READING Freccero, John. “Satan’s Fall and the Quaestio de aqua et terra.” Italica 38 (1961): 99–115. Nardi, Bruno. La caduta di Lucifero e l’autenticità della “Quaestio de aqua et terra.” Turin: SEI, 1959. Scott, John A. Understanding Dante. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Wicksteed, Philip, trans. Testo critico della Società Dantesca Italiana. Edited by Ermenegildo Pistelli Florence: Società Dantesca Italiana, 1960. Available online. URL: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/ pdp/index.html. Accessed June 15, 2007.

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Rime (ca. 1283–ca. 1308) Dante never intended his lyric poems to be collected into a single volume. He chose a number of his earlier lyrics to included in the VITA NUOVA and would have utilized some 14 of his later canzoni in the CONVIVIO, had he ever completed that project beyond the three poems that he did choose. But a complete edition of all his lyrics gathered together was not part of his plan. We owe the collection of lyrics known as the Rime largely to modern editors, most importantly to Michele Barbi, who in 1921 published what was for most of the 20th century the standard edition of the Rime. In the following summaries and brief analyses I use Foster and Boyde’s two-volume Dante’s Lyric Poetry (Oxford, 1967), which is the standard English edition of the poems, with translations based on Barbi’s texts. Barbi’s edition comprises 118 poems, including several poems addressed to Dante by other poets. Foster and Boyde number only Dante’s own compositions and include 89 poems. The numbers of the following poems are based on Foster and Boyde’s edition. Modern editors tend to group Dante’s poems in rough chronological order, beginning with lyrics composed when Dante was a teenager. He tells us that the first poem in the Vita nuova (A ciascun’ alma presa e gentil core) was written when he was 18 years old, and it is likely that the earliest poems in the Rime were written about the same time or perhaps even earlier than that SONNET. The last poems in the Rime are poems written in exile, while Dante was working on DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA and the Convivio. Some may even have been composed while he was working on the Inferno. Therefore the lyrics in the Rime cover a period of about a quarter of a century, from about 1283 to about 1307. The poems thus display a wide range of styles and experiments in verse that show us Dante working with lyric approaches that he ultimately abandoned, as well as some that he chose to utilize more fruitfully in the COMEDY. Influences on Dante’s lyrics are varied. Some of his earliest poems (such as his early sonnet exchange with Dante da Maiano, numbers 1–5)

312 Rime seem to be particularly influenced by the Tuscan school of poetry that was dominant in Dante’s youth. This style of poetry, popularized by GUITTONE D’AREZZO, expressed mainly middle-class values but did so in a highly wrought rhetorical style, using a vocabulary rich with a good number of Latin and Provençal words and employing unusually elaborate rhetorical figures and inordinately complex sentence structures that Dante was later to condemn in De vulgari eloquentia. In other early lyrics Dante looked back to the poetry of the Sicilian court of FREDERICK II OF SWABIA, especially as practiced by GIACOMO DA LENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINI, “the NOTARY”). This style, more directly influenced by the poetry of the Provençal troubadours, makes use of motifs like the lover as the lady’s servant, the humble lover’s striving to show himself worthy of the lady, and the necessity for secrecy in the love affair. Eventually these early experiments give way to the influence of GUIDO CAVALCANTI, particularly during the period reflected in the Vita nuova. Poems written under Cavalcanti’s influence tend to focus on the nobility of the lover, since true love can only be experienced by the truly noble of heart; they draw imagery from learned sources like astronomy, philosophy, and medicine—thus Cavalcanti developed his doctrine that the lover’s psyche includes “spirits” that can be released when the lover sighs; and finally these poems view love as a destructive force, occurring when the lover mistakes his beloved for the Highest Good. Dante developed at the height of the period of the Vita nuova his own DOLCE STIL NOVO (sweet new style), in which, rather than complain about his own suffering, the poet focuses on the perfections of the lady, who is like an angel of the heavenly spheres (a motif Dante borrowed from the earlier poet GUIDO GUINIZELLI). All of these different styles are apparent in the first few dozen lyrics of the Rime. Other subjects and approaches appear in Dante’s lyrics after about 1295 or so. His tenzone or poetic debate with FORESE DONATI (numbers 72– 74) introduces a low style of scurrilous language into his verse. A group of love poems to a youthful

lady form what are sometimes called the pargoletta lyrics (numbers 64–66). Another group of poems are called the rime petrose, or “Stone Lady” poems (numbers 77–80), which introduce a cruel and cold lady as the object of a new kind of Dantean love poem. Another consists of the five sonnets concerning the nature of love that he exchanged with his friend CINO DA PISTOIA (numbers 84–88). Still another group includes a number of ethical meditations in the form of lengthy canzoni, three of which were included in the Convivio; the group also includes numbers 69, 70, and 83, as well as 81, one of Dante’s finest lyrics concerned with his own exile. The forms Dante used in his lyrics were well established by the time Dante practiced them. Although he occasionally employed such atypical forms as a double sonnet (number 8) or a sestina (number 78), nearly all of his lyrics are either sonnets, canzoni, or ballate. The sonnet had been invented the previous generation by Giacomo da Lentino, the term sonnetto meaning “a little sound or song.” For these Dante employed the typical Italian hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) line and used what today is called the “Italian” or sometimes “Petrarchan” rhyme scheme, consisting of an eightline section (the octave) generally rhyming a b b a a b b a, plus a six-line section (the sestet), in which Dante may use any combination of c and d rhymes, or c, d, and e rhymes. Typically there is a turning point or volta at the beginning of the ninth line, moving from the octave to the sestet. The vast majority of Dante’s lyrics are sonnets, both in the Rime and in the Vita nuova. Dante considered the CANZONE, the long song that might deal with one of three serious topics (love, ethics, or valor), to be the supreme form of the Italian lyric. Modeled on the Provençal canso, the canzone was introduced into Italian poetry by Giacomo da Lentino. As it developed, the Italian canzone usually contained from five to seven stanzas with identical form. The stanzas typically ranged in length from 10 to 20 lines, and usually the lines were predominantly 11 syllables with a smaller number of seven-syllable lines mixed in. In De vulgari eloquentia Dante describes the form

Rime of the canzone as employing a three-part structure inside a two-part structure. He explains it thus: The stanza of a canzone is made up of a head and a tail, or fronte and sirma (frons and cauda in Latin). The first part, the frons, is divided into two parts, which Dante calls pedes or feet, and these two feet are structured identically. The cauda completes the poem and may or may not include an ending envoy, sometimes in the form of a tornada or direct address to the “song,” telling it where it should go and be sung. Usually the envoy of a canzone is a shorter stanza, repeating the rhyme scheme of the stanzaic cauda. Dante seems to have been less interested in the ballata as a lyric form. He includes one in the Vita nuova and five more in the complete Rime. Generally the ballata, which originated as a dance song, was a form used for subjects less serious than those explored in the canzone, and the chief influence on Dante’s ballate seems to have been Cavalcanti, who was fond of the form. A ballata would open with a brief introductory strophe, called a ripresa, which introduced the theme of the poem. Each stanza of the ballata was then divided into two parts, and the second part of the stanza concluded with a rhyme scheme introduced in the ripresa. As in the canzone the two parts of the stanza were linked by rhyme, and the first part was generally subdivided into two smaller sections. In the following, except for lyrics used elsewhere by Dante, I have given the first lines of each poem in the original Italian followed by Foster and Boyde’s translation of the first line. Although I have indicated which poems were used by Dante in the Vita nuova and the Convivio, I have not commented on them here since they are discussed in the commentaries on those two works. For those poems I have given the English titles under which they are discussed in the sections of the Vita nuova and Convivio. It is also important to note that for readers looking for an English verse translation of the poems (rather than the prose translations included in the Foster and Boyde text), there are three good recent translations available. These texts, by Patrick Diehl, Marc Cirigliano, and Joseph Tusiani, are noted later.

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1. SAVETE GIUDICAR VOSTRA RAGIONE (“YOU KNOW HOW TO INTERPRET YOUR THEME, INTELLIGENT AS YOU ARE”) Synopsis The first five poems of modern editions of the Rime are sonnets that formed part of a correspondence with another poet, Dante da Maiano, whose verse was very much in the earlier Tuscan style of Guittone d’Arezzo. If, as Dante says, the first sonnet of the Vita nuova was written when he was 18, it seems likely that these sonnets addressed to the other Dante were written about the same time. Sonnet number 1 is a response to Dante da Maiano, who seems to have initiated the exchange by posing a question, though his responses suggest that he does not seem to have known Dante’s identity. Da Maiano’s sonnet had asked for help interpreting a dream he had experienced, in which a beautiful lady crowned him with a blossoming wreath and clothed him in a gown, after which he took her in his arms and kissed her numerous times. His dead mother followed them in the dream, da Maiano concludes. The poem may have been circulated among the poets of FLORENCE, and the youthful Dante may have been thus inspired to write a reply. Dante’s poem begins with a declaration that da Maiano’s own wit may best expound the dream, but Dante will attempt to do so. The crown, Dante suggests, stands for desire, inspired by the lady’s beauty and virtue, while the gown suggests the hope da Maiano harbors to be her lover. The resurrected mother denotes the steadfastness that he will find in the lady. Commentary Dante follows da Maiano’s rhyme scheme in his sonnet (a b a b a b a b c d e c d e) rather than the more common a b b a a b b a c d e c d e. He even uses the same a-rhyme (-one) as da Maiano. Always careful of the way he divides his poems, Dante devotes the first quatrain to a complimentary answer to da Maiano, the second to interpreting the crown, the first three lines of the sestet to his interpretation of the gown, and the final three lines to the dead mother. One can note in these

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early poems the influence of the Tuscan school, one of whose typical stylistic devices was the use of binomials, such as can be seen in Dante’s line 6 (“proceeding from merit or beauty”).

2. PER PRUOVA DI SAPER COM VALE O QUANTO (“THE GOLDSMITH, TO TEST THE VALUE OF GOLD, BRINGS IT TO THE FIRE”) Synopsis The youthful Dante, having apparently adopted da Maiano as a poetic mentor, addresses a second sonnet to the more established poet. A jeweler tests his gold by heating it to see how it melts, Dante begins. Similarly Dante is sending his verses to da Maiano (whom he sees as the most learned of men) to test their worth. In the sestet Dante proposes a question: Which of love’s pains is the worst? But he concludes the sonnet with his real concern: Tell me, he asks, whether I have any promise as a poet. Commentary The rhyme scheme this time is a b a b a b a b c d e e d c. Again the verse is carefully structured, the first quatrain introducing the figure of the jeweler, the second stating Dante’s purpose in writing to da Maiano. The first half of the sestet proposes the question about love; the second half asks the more urgent question: Does my verse show promise? To his credit da Maiano seems to have recognized something in the youthful Dante’s verses, though he does not seem to have known the poet himself—he addresses his reply to “Whatever be your name.” Da Maiano’s sonnet not only copies Dante’s rhyme scheme this time, but uses the exact rhymes that Dante had used in his poem. Still he lauds the wisdom of the young Dante’s verses, finally ending with the opinion that unrequited love is the most painful of all love’s sorrows.

3. LO VOSTRO FERMO DIR FINO ED ORRATO (“YOUR ASSURED, ELEGANT, DIGNIFIED SPEECH BEARS GOOD WITNESS”) Synopsis Dante replies with another highly complimentary sonnet, saying that da Maiano’s poems confirm the

reputation he has, which stands so high that others cannot hope to see its summit. But, Dante very cautiously asks, he has heard that pains other than unrequited love may be heavier to bear and asks da Maiano to give his opinion as to the truth of this. Commentary Once more Dante uses the a b a b a b a b c d e c d e rhyme scheme. His hyperbolic praise of da Maiano is typical of the Tuscan school. He praises da Maiano in the octave and poses his question in the sestet. In his reply da Maiano echoes Dante’s rhyme scheme and uses the identical b-rhyme (-arla) and c-rhyme (-ato). He twice calls Dante amico (good friend), though he indicates that nothing in Dante’s poems reveals who he is or where he is from, though his wisdom shows through. In his sestet da Maiano claims some knowledge of love, having been a lover himself, and declares that unrequited love is indeed the greatest sorrow—all other sorrow in love stems from this mother of them all.

4. LASSO, LO DOL CHE PIÙ MI DOLE E SERRA (“ALAS, WHAT MOST PAINS AND GRIPS ME IS THE PAIN OF THANKING YOU”) Synopsis Dante’s fourth sonnet begins in an amusing way, with a declaration of his pain that seems to be the opening of a love song. But the pain turns out to be what Dante feels at his inability to repay da Maiano for sharing his wisdom. Again he lauds da Maiano, then says he would like to know more about the pains of unrequited love. “Cite me authorities,” he says (l. 9), answering, in a sense, da Maiano’s claim to know of love’s pains through experience. Let us find authorities that support the conclusions of experience, Dante says, and then they will have proved the point about the pain of unrequited love. Commentary This sonnet rhymes a b b a a b a c d e e d c, but that only tells a portion of the story. In his third sonnet da Maiano had used a device popular with Guittone d’Arezzo and the Tuscan school, a rime equivoche, which involved the use of homophones—identical words with different meanings.

Rime In this answering sonnet Dante uses the same word for each rhyme: The a-rhyme is serra, the b-rhyme como, the c-rhyme saggio, the d-rhyme porta, and the e-rhyme chiara. This sonnet is grounded in the Scholastic commonplace that there are two chief paths available for people to find truth: experience and authority. Arguments must be based on one of these sources of evidence, and the best argument should ideally be based on both. Dante tells da Maiano that he would like to add the weight of authority to da Maiano’s argument from experience.

5. SAVERE E CORTESIA, INGEGNO ED ARTE (“KNOWLEDGE AND COURTESY; NATURAL WIT AND ACQUIRED SKILL”) Synopsis The fifth and last of Dante’s sonnets to da Maiano is written in response to one in which da Maiano says he has no choice and must do whatever love compels him to do. He tried, he says, reading Remedia amoris (“Remedy of Love”), in which OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO) instructs men how to escape from love, but da Maiano says it was of no use. Neither strength, nor wit, nor words avail against love; the only response must be patience and loyal service. He ends by asking Dante whether he thinks this is true. Dante responds first with a long list of human virtues, including courtesy, knowledge, nobility, beauty, generosity, and strength, all of which, he says, delight love to some extent. If da Maiano wants to make use of his native strength, Dante says, he should do so in the service of love, rather than attempt to work against him. No one has the strength to joust with love, Dante says, though some fools do try. Commentary Dante’s sonnet, rhyming a b b a a b b a c d e e d c, makes use of two of da Maiano’s rhymes in its response to his sonnet: Dante’s a-rhyme is da Maiano’s d-rhyme, while Dante’s d-rhyme is da Maiano’s c-rhyme. Structurally Dante lists the many virtues in the first half of the octave and discusses their value to love in the second half. In the first half of the sestet Dante advises da Maiano to use his

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strength and in the second half declares it is foolish to strive against love. It might be noted that the personified god of love is conventional in the “religion of love” motif popular in courtly literature and becomes important in many of Dante’s early poems, both here and in the Vita nuova.

6. A CIASUN ‘ALMA PRESA E GENTIL CORE (“TO EVERY CAPTIVE SOUL AND LOVING HEART”) Discussed as the first poem in the Vita nuova (Chapter 3).

7. COM PIÙ VI FERE AMOR CO’ SUOI VINCASTRI (“THE MORE LOVE STRIKES YOU WITH HIS RODS”) Synopsis Another sonnet with a personified god of love, this one begins with advice: When the shepherd love smites you with his stave, do not resist his power. At some point love will end your suffering and give you joy six times greater than your pain. Your heart should pave a road over which to follow love, Dante says in the sestet, if love has indeed struck you as the verses you write indicate. Do not stray from him, for only he can grant his servants such joyous rewards. Commentary This poem, apparently a response to verses from an unknown poet, as the reference to the recipient’s poetry in line 11 suggests, is remarkable for several reasons. With a rhyme scheme of a b b a a b b a c d c d c d Dante utilizes only two rhymes in the sestet, and with the d-rhyme makes use of the Tuscan device of rime equivoche, as the word punto serves as the rhyme in all three lines. This sonnet also contains Dante’s earliest use of rime aspre (or harsh rhymes), playing with rough sounds that reflect the harshness of love’s pains. This is particularly apparent in the a-rhymes (vincastri, l’incastri, impiastri, and lastri), before Dante moves into the more mellifluous sounds of the sestet. Some have speculated that this experiment is due in part to his new acquaintance with the poetry of the troubadour ARNAUT DANIEL (ARNAUD),

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renowned for his difficult style or trobar clus. In addition Dante makes the unusual choice here of using enjambment between lines 8 and 9, breaking the lines in midsentence, thereby creating an almost invisible transition between the octave and the sestet of the sonnet.

8. SE LIPPO AMICO SE’ TU CHE ME LEGGI (“IF YOU WHO READ ME ARE FRIEND LIPPO”) Synopsis This poem, in its own voice, says that it is intended for Lippo (probably the Florentine poet Lippo Pasci de’ Bardi) and gives him courteous greeting. The poem declares itself to be a humble sonnet, going before Lippo and asking him to hear the poem’s case. The poem says it is bringing a naked girl (metaphorically, an accompanying poem), walking behind it shyly, and asks that Lippo kindly clothe her and keep her so that she may go wherever she wishes. Commentary This poem is a “double sonnet”—a form made popular by Guittone d’Arezzo. It is a 20-line poem divided into two major sections—one of 12 lines followed by another of eight. Each of these is further subdivided into two sections, so that the poem comprises two sestets followed by two quatrains. The rhyme scheme is a a b b b a a b b b a c d d c d c c d, and the second and fifth lines of each sestet and the third line of each quatrain are short, sevensyllable lines. The two sestets of the poem are the greeting and praise of Lippo, while the final octave introduces the nude girl, apparently a metaphor for another poem for which this double sonnet to Lippo acted as an introduction and dedication. The accompanying poem is believed to have been the following canzone, Lo meo servente core (number 9), a poem Dante may be asking Lippo to “clothe” by writing the music to accompany it.

9. LO MEO SERVENTE CORE (“MAY LOVE COMMEND TO YOU MY LOYAL HEART”) Synopsis This poem is a one-stanza canzone in which the speaker commends to his beloved his heart, which

he says love has already given her, and he prays that pity may sometimes remind her of him. Even before he has left, he says, his soul is consoled by the hope of returning to her. His time away from her will seem quite short, since he will constantly have her image in his memory, and so he commends himself to her until his return. Commentary The poem is 14 lines, but its varying line lengths and unusual rhyme scheme indicate it is not intended as a sonnet. Instead it is a one-stanza canzone and therefore intended to be set to music: Dante wrote 21 extant canzoni, three of which (all written early in his career) are one-stanza poems. The poem rhymes a b b c a b b c c d d c e e, with the first eight lines alternating between seven and 11 syllables, and with the d-rhymes of the last section also containing seven syllables. In the 12th line the word mente is an internal rhyme for the d-rhyme sovente that ends the previous line. It was Giacomo da Lentino who popularized the canzone form. Dante discusses the structure of the canzone in his De vulgari eloquentia, where he explains that the canzone has a three-part structure contained within a two-part structure. A canzone has a frons and cauda (a head and tail), and the head is divided into two parts, which he calls “feet” or pedes, which are identical in structure. Here in the first foot (the first four lines rhyming a b b c) the speaker commends his heart to his lady, and in the second foot (the identically rhymed second quatrain) he describes how the hope of returning to her consoles him. The cauda (here the section rhyming c d d c e e) concludes the poem with the idea of her memory’s making his journey seem short.

10. O VOI CHE PER LA VIA D’AMOR PASSATE (“O YE WHO TRAVEL ON THE ROAD OF LOVE”) Discussed in Chapter 7 of the Vita nuova.

11. PIANGETE, AMANTI, POI CHE PIANGE AMORE (“IF LOVE HIMSELF WEEP, SHALL NOT LOVERS WEEP”) Discussed as the first poem in Chapter 8 of the Vita nuova.

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12. MORTE VILLANA, DI PIETÀ NEMICA (“VILLAINOUS DEATH, AT WAR WITH TENDERNESS”) Discussed as the second poem in Chapter 8 of the Vita nuova.

13. LA DISPIETATA MENTE, CHE PUR MIRA (“PITILESS MEMORY, EVER GAZING BACK”) Synopsis This canzone of five stanzas and a tornada begins with the speaker’s declaration of his mental anguish: Because of love he is torn between memories of the past and yearning for his love in the country he has left. The only relief from love’s torment must be from the lady to whom the poem is sent. He begs the lady not to fail him but to help him as a lord aids his own servant, not only for the servant’s sake but for his own honor. Since love himself has painted her on his heart, she should care more for love, in the same way that God cares more for humans, who are made in his image. In the third stanza Dante says that if the lady delays her grace, he will not be able to stand it, since he is at his wit’s end and has approached her as his last hope. He is like a man who has borne every burden until he could carry no more, before turning for help to his friend, not knowing what the friend’s reaction will be. If the friend denies him help, the man must die. He goes on in stanza 4 to assert that this lady is the one he loves most and who can give him the greatest of gifts. He desires only to serve her and detests anything that does not do her honor. She has his life or death in her hands, but he has placed all his faith in her. All who know her know that she is full of mercy. In the fifth stanza Dante asks the lady to send her greeting to his pining heart. The door to his heart is fastened shut with the arrow with which love struck him when he was taken with love for her. Thus only messengers of love can open it. Even the lady’s greeting would cause him more harm if it were not accompanied by love’s messengers. In the three-line conclusion Dante addresses his song, telling it to find the quickest way to the lady, since he is so close to death.

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Commentary Dante uses a 13-line stanza in this canzone, rhyming a b c a b c c d e e d f f, where the 10th line of each stanza is a short seven-syllable line. The poem is a fairly conventional love song, based chiefly on the conventional motif of the speaker’s dying for love. Only the lady can cure him. The image of the prison, to which only the lady has the key, is also conventional. Dante would have known these conventions through the Provençal troubadours and their Italian followers, the Tuscan poets as well as the Sicilian school. This poem especially shows the influence of the Sicilian school and its chief poet, Giacomo da Lentino. In fact Dante uses the Sicilian form sacciate (for “to know”) in line 29 and borrows the figure of love painting the lady’s image on his heart from one of Giacomo’s sonnets (Meravigliosamente). Just whom this poem is addressed to is uncertain: Some say it is an early poem to Beatrice; some say it is addressed to one of Dante’s “screen ladies” mentioned in the Vita nuova. It does seem to have been written while Dante was away from Florence, since it refers to the land he has left, and some scholars believe it may have been written when the poet was in Bolgona (where he is in the following poem).

14. NON MI PORIANO GIÀ MAI FARE AMMENDA (“NEVER CAN MY EYES MAKE AMENDS TO ME”) Synopsis This comic sonnet begins with the speaker’s condemning his own eyes, saying that except by going blind, they can never make amends to him for gazing at the Garisend tower in Bologna so intently that they missed seeing the worthiest object of consideration. Therefore he will never have peace with his eyes, he says, no matter how much they weep. These eyes failed to perceive what they should have been able to recognize even without seeing. His spirits are now so sad that he will slay his eyes himself, he says—unless he changes his mind. Commentary This poem is generally dated about 1287. It rhymes a b a b a b a b c d e c d e, with the octave presenting

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his disappointment at missing the celebrated beauty (apparently a woman, though the sonnet does not actually say that—it has been suggested that Dante may even be talking about the Asinelli, Bologna’s other famous tower), and the sestet speaking of what he plans to do with his foolish eyes for their offense. Dante’s playfulness extends to the use of enjambment throughout the first quatrain and in lines 11–12 of the sestet.

15. GUIDO, I’ VORREI CHE TU E LAPO ED IO (“GUIDO, I WISH THAT YOU AND LAPO AND I”) Synopsis In this famous sonnet, addressed to his friend and mentor Guido Cavalcanti, Dante expresses the wish that he, Guido, and fellow stilnovist poet LAPO GIANNI could be taken aboard an enchanted ship, where, never bothered by tempest or impediment, they could live together in harmony. The fantasy continues as Dante wishes that their three ladies— Monna Vanna, Monna Lagia, and the lady whose number is 30—could be placed on board with them by a benevolent wizard. There they would talk of love all day, and the ladies would be quite content, as would the poets. Commentary In this sonnet (rhyming a b b a a b b a c d e e d c) the octave describes Dante’s wish for the poets to be aboard the ship, while the sestet extends the wish to include the three ladies. Foster and Boyde note that this kind of wish poem is related to the Provençal genre called the plazer. Scholars have related the enchanted ship to ships appearing in Arthurian legends, especially in the Quest of the Holy Grail. The Arthurian allusions continue with the reference to the good enchanter in line 11, who probably is intended to recall Merlin himself. One difficulty of the poem is the identity of the lady whose number is 30. This is Dante’s lady (Monna Vanna being Guido’s and Monna Lagio Lapo’s), but in the sixth chapter of the Vita nuova Dante refers to his list of the 60 most attractive women of Florence, where Beatrice miraculously appears as number 9. Thus number 30 is most likely one of Dante’s screen ladies mentioned in his Vita nuova.

Cavalcanti wrote a sonnet in answer to Dante’s, in which he declines Dante’s offer because his mistress, Monna Vanna, has deserted and wounded him.

16. SONAR BRACCHETTI E CACCIATORI AIZZARE (“THE BELLING OF HOUNDS, THE CRIES OF HUNTERS URGING THEM ON”) Synopsis This sonnet begins with a stirring series of clauses describing a hunt, with dogs belling, hares fleeing, and hunters crying out. The speaker declares that such a scene would delight a heart that is not burdened by love. The speaker, however, who is weighed down with thoughts of love, is mocked by one of those thoughts, which tells him ironically how noble he is being by abandoning his lady for this sport. Afraid that the god of love may hear of this, the speaker grows ashamed and his heart grows heavy. Commentary The exciting movement of the opening quatrain of this sonnet—note the remarkable string of double consonants in bracchett, cacciatori, aizzare—is noteworthy, as is the sonnet’s structure: Although the rhyme scheme (a b b a a b b a c d c c d c) follows the octave-sestet division of a typical sonnet, the pivotal line of this poem is line 7, where the speaker begins his own contrast with the mood of the hunt with “Ed io” (But I). Here also, as with the previous sonnet, the influence of Cavalcanti can be seen, as Dante includes the Cavalcantian term pesanza, referring to his heavy heart—a condition that is typical in the poetry of Cavalcanti, whose view of love was essentially pessimistic. Dante’s only use of the term is here, in this poem.

17. VOLGATE LI OCCHI A VEDER CHI MI TIRA (“TURN YOUR EYES TO SEE WHO IT IS WHO DRAWS ME”) Synopsis The speaker of this sonnet addresses an unknown listener, apparently a good friend and perhaps a fellow poet, and says that he can travel no far-

Rime ther with this companion because love has chained him—love, who causes pain for lovers through gentle women. Dante begs his companion to pray to love to let his power enter Dante. One understands the ways of love only through pain and sighing. In the sestet Dante describes how love enters his mind fiercely and paints an image of a beautiful lady, and how he hears a soft voice whispering to him, chiding him for giving up the lady for nothing at all. Commentary The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d e d c e, with the octave extolling love’s power, and the sestet detailing love’s actions within the speaker’s mind. The image of love drawing an image of the lady in the speaker’s mind is reminiscent of the painted image in the canzone La dispietata mente, che pur mira (number 13), which Dante had borrowed from the Sicilian notary, Giacomo da Lentino. The pain and sighing associated with the god of love, however, are the kinds of images typical of Guido Cavalcanti.

18. DEH, RAGIONIAMO INSIEME UN POCO, AMORE (“COME, LOVE, LET’S TALK TOGETHER A LITTLE”) Synopsis In this rather charming sonnet Dante addresses love himself—not as the great and powerful lord who gives sorrow to all, but rather as an old acquaintance with whom the poet can have a chat. The speaker invites love to talk awhile to cheer him up. They can both take delight in the conversation if they talk about his lady, whom they both admire. Apparently on a journey the speaker says the miles will pass more quickly if they speak of her. He anticipates his return all the more joyfully when he tells of, and listens to, descriptions of her nobility. In the sestet the speaker tells love to begin the discussion, to do quickly what he has come down to do, whether out of mercy or courtesy. The speaker’s mind turns from its cares and focuses only on the words it keenly longs to hear. Commentary The journey motif of this poem is reminiscent of Dante’s earlier one-stanza canzone Lo meo servent

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core (number 9). Here again Dante depicts himself as saddened by the necessity of journeying away from his beloved lady. Dante’s rhyme scheme for this sonnet—a b b a a b b a c d e e d c—divides the poem into an octave comprising the poet’s invitation to love to come down and talk and a sestet addressed to the love now present, more specifically asking him to begin the conversation. The imagery here seems to break somewhat from the pessimistic depictions of love typical of Cavalcanti’s poetry.

19. SONETTO, SE MEUCCIO T’È MOSTRATO (“SONNET, WHEN MEUCCIO HAS BEEN POINTED OUT TO YOU”) Synopsis Addressing his sonnet directly, Dante tells the poem to greet Meuccio humbly when it meets him, throwing itself at Meuccio’s feet. When it has been with him awhile, the sonnet is to greet Meuccio again and then draw him aside to give him its message. The message is this: He who loves you sends his most valued jewels, as a way of recommending himself to Meuccio’s good heart. But as a first gift the sonnet is to present Meuccio its brothers, which are to stay with Meuccio always. Commentary This sonnet, addressed to the poet Meuzzo Tolomei da Siena, was apparently sent as an introduction and cover piece for a collection of poems Dante was sending to Meuzzo. No one knows which of Dante’s poems were included with this one as gifts to Meuzzo. Dante’s friend the poet and jurist Cino da Pistoia is also known to have sent Meuzzo a poem. Dante’s sonnet, rhyming a b b a a b b a c d e e d c, devotes its octave to the hyperbolically complimentary greeting to Meuzzo, and its sestet to the offer of his “jewels” and the sonnet’s “brothers”—Dante’s poetic gifts.

20. CAVALCANDO L’ALTRIER PER UN CAMMINO (“AS I RODE OUT ONE DAY NOT LONG AGO”) Discussed in Chapter 9 of the Vita nuova.

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21. PER UNA GHIRLANDETTA (“BECAUSE OF A GARLAND I SAW”) Synopsis In this, the earliest of Dante’s ballate, he begins with an introductory tercet where he asserts that because of a garland he once saw, he now will sigh over every flower. In his first stanza he tells his lady that when he saw her wearing a garland, he saw an angel of the god of love hovering over her, saying, “Whoever sees me will praise my Lord”—that is, love. In the second stanza Dante says that when he is with his lady Fioretta, he will tell her that she wears his sighs like a garland. But when she goes to him, she will be crowned by love to feed his desire. In the final stanza he says that the verses he has woven of his words will be wearing a borrowed garment and begs the lady to be gracious to whoever sings it. Commentary As was the canzone, the ballata was a musical form, though one generally used for less serious themes than the canzone. Cavalcanti had written a number of ballate, and it seems likely that this early ballata of Dante’s was written under Cavalcanti’s influence. Typically a ballata began with a short opening section called a ripresa, which stated the theme of the poem and provided the rhyme scheme for the second part of each stanza forming the body of the poem. Thus the three lines opening this ballata introduce the theme of the speaker’s love of the garland he saw his lady wearing. The a b c rhyme of the ripresa’s sevensyllable lines provides the form for the final three lines of each stanza in the poem, each of which ends with the b c rhymes introduced in the opening. The overall rhyme scheme for the stanzas is a b a b c d e (the d e rhymes repeating the b c rhymes from the ripresa), and the three stanzas of the poem follow a progression, from the lady wearing the garland of flowers in stanza 1, to her wearing a garland of the lover’s sighs in stanza 2, to the lover’s words forming the garland that becomes the poem in the third stanza. Garlands of flowers were typically worn by women of Florence on May Day, and in fact it was May Day, 1274, when Dante first met the nine-year-old Beatrice. The woman in the poem is named Fioretta, which is probably what the trou-

badours called a senhal, a code-name for the poet’s lady—this seems likely in particular because the name means “little flower” and is therefore most appropriate for a lady in a poem about garlands. Most scholars think it unlikely that this poem was written to Beatrice and think it more probable that it was sent to one of the “screen ladies” Dante speaks of in the Vita nuova. The final stanza tells the lady that the poem wears a borrowed garment, which probably means that it was set to a previously composed melody. Apparently, too, Dante sent the song to the lady with a hired performer to sing it—someone like CASELLA, who is depicted singing one of Dante’s canzone at the beginning of the Purgatorio.

22. MADONNA, QUEL SIGNOR CHE VOI PORTATE (“LADY, THAT LORD YOU BEAR IN YOUR EYES”) Synopsis In this canzone addressed to a lady Dante begins by declaring that the great lord (the god of love) who lives in her eyes gives him hope, since love is able to overcome all resistance, for wherever he dwells, love draws all goodness to himself. The speaker therefore gives hope to his poor heart, which has been so sorely embattled that it would have been lost long since had love not fortified it against all adversity. The strength originates in the sight of the god of love himself, as well as the memory of the place and the enchanting flower that have encircled his mind with color, thanks to the lady’s courtesy. Commentary Another one-stanza canzone like number 9, this poem rhymes a b b a b a a b b c c e e b e e d d and in lines 3, 7, 11, 12, 16 and 17 includes short sevensyllable lines. The opening quatrains form the frons or “head” of the poem, which divides into two equal pedes or “feet.” In the first foot the speaker speaks of the hope he receives from the love in his lady’s eyes; in the second foot he praises love in general. The final 10 lines form the cauda or “tail” of the poem, in which the speaker describes how love, his lady (metaphorically described as a flower), and the place he has seen her all fortify his

Rime heart against sorrow. The enchanting flower in line 15 here recalls the “Fioretta” of the previous ballata and looks forward to the “Violetta” of poem 23, suggesting that the poems may have been written for the same lady.

23. DEH, VIOLETTA, CHE IN OMBRA D’AMORE (“AH VIOLETTA, YOU WHO SO SUDDENLY APPEARED TO MY EYES IN LOVE’S SHADOW”) Synopsis In another poem addressed to a woman with the name of a flower, Dante begins by saying that he saw the lady suddenly in the shadow of love and begs her to pity his heart, which is now dying of love. Violetta’s beauty, exceeding that of human nature, has set his thoughts on fire, and her flaming power has also kindled in him a hope. He tells Violetta not to consider his hope, but rather his desire: Many women, having waited too long, have ultimately regretted the suffering they caused. Commentary This ballata is made up of an introductory ripresa of four 11-syllable lines followed by a single strophe. The ripresa, rhyming a b b a, introduces the theme of the speaker’s sudden love for Violetta and his anguished longing. The strophe continues rhyming c d e d c e e f f a (with seven-syllable lines in 7 and 10), the last four lines repeating the form if not the precise rhyme scheme of the ripresa, though the final line repeats the a-rhyme of the opening. This strophe expands on the ideas of the opening, adding the fire imagery and the warning that women who spurn their lovers live to regret it.

24. BALLATA, I’ VÒI CHE TU RITROVI AMORE (“I WANT YOU TO GO, BALLAD, TO SEEK OUT LOVE”) Discussed in Chapter 12 of the Vita nuova.

25. LO DOLOROSO AMOR CHE MI CONDUCE (“THE SORROWFUL LOVE THAT LEADS ME TO FINAL DEATH”) Synopsis In this early canzone Dante begins by declaring that love is leading him toward death, because the lady

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who once was his guiding star has now taken her light from him. Love’s wound, which he had kept concealed, now gives him so much pain that it has become obvious, and since he expects nothing but torment now, he sighs and says that he goes to death because of Beatrice. Her sweet name embitters his heart, he says, so that whenever he sees the name he will feel pain until, weakened by anguish, he will be blown over dead in the first gust of wind. When he dies, his sorrow will accompany his soul, but his soul will remember the sweet eyes of Beatrice, to which nothing in Paradise can compare. After death, he says, his soul will give no thought to anything but his remembered love, and when it goes before God, if he does not forgive the speaker’s sins, the soul will depart into eternal torment. Even in that case the soul will be so absorbed in the contemplation of the lady who caused the speaker’s death that it will not feel Hell’s punishment. Thus love, which caused him loss in this world, will give him compensation in the next. In the shorter concluding stanza the speaker addresses Death, who does the will of the lady. He asks Death to visit her and make her tell him why she has withdrawn the light of her eyes from the speaker. If she has cast them on another, he wants to know so that he can die with less grief. Commentary This canzone is the only poem written during Beatrice’s lifetime that actually contains her name. And here the name serves an ironic purpose: Beatrice means “bringer of blessings,” yet in this poem she brings only torment, so that in line 15 the antithesis of the “sweet name” causing bitterness in the speaker’s heart recalls the antitheses characteristic of Guittone d’Arezzo’s Tuscan school. The imagery of the first part of the poem, which depicts the lady as the lover’s guiding star and love as a wound that only the lady can heal, is conventional, influenced by the Provençal troubadours. The sighs of line 13 and the destructive force of love described in the poem suggest that its main influence is Guido Cavalcanti. The third stanza, in which the lover goes before God and finds the beauty of the lady overpowers the joys of Heaven

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or the torments of Hell, may actually reflect the ending of Guido Guinizelli’s seminal canzone, Al cor gentil, in which the lover goes before God and excuses his blasphemy by asserting that he mistook his lady for a creature of Heaven. In this way the poem may look forward to the “sweet new style” Dante would demonstrate in later poems. This canzone consists of three 14-line stanzas rhyming a b c a b c c d e e f e g g (in which lines 9 and 10 are short, seven-syllable lines), followed by an eight-line tornada rhyming a b c b d d e e (with a seven-syllable third line). The poem follows a logical progression, in which the first stanza discusses the torment of the lover, the second describes his death, and the third considers the ultimate fate of his soul.

26. TUTTI LI MIEI PENSER PARLAN D’AMORE (“ALL MY THOUGHTS SPEAK TO ME CONCERNING LOVE”) Discussed in Chapter 13 of the Vita nuova.

27. CON L’ALTRE DONNE MIA VISTA GABBATE (“YOU JOIN WITH OTHER LADIES TO MAKE SPORT”) Discussed in Chapter 14 of the Vita nuova.

28. CIÒ CHE M’INCONTRA, NE LA MENTE MORE (“WHATEVER MIGHT RESTRAIN ME WHEN I FEEL DRAWN”) Discussed in Chapter 15 of the Vita nuova.

29. SPESSE FIATE VEGNONMI A LA MENTE (“TIME AND AGAIN THE THOUGHT COMES TO MY MIND”) Discussed in Chapter 16 of the Vita nuova.

30. DE GLI OCCHI DE LA MIA DONNA SI MOVE (“FROM MY DEAR LADY’S EYES THERE COMES A LIGHT”) Synopsis Dante begins this sonnet by saying that the noble light from his lady’s eyes reveals a world whose beauty is beyond description. The rays from her eyes strike his heart and cause him to fear so that he trembles and resolves not to return to that place. But his resolution cannot stand against the lady.

As the speaker returns to the site of his defeat, he tries to comfort his anxious eyes, which were the first to feel the force of the lady’s gaze. But when he arrives, he is unable to open his eyes, as the desire that took them to that place disappears. At that point, he says, he must rely only on love itself. Commentary The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d e d c e, with the octave concentrating on the power of the lady’s gaze, and the sestet describing the speaker’s attempt to look upon her again after his initial defeat. The inexpressibility topos that ends the first quatrain was a medieval commonplace, but on the whole the poem is generally considered stilnovist in style, with its emphasis on the miraculous power of the lady’s gaze. The fear and trembling caused by the lady’s eyes are images manifesting the influence of Cavalcanti.

31. NE LE MAN VOSTRE, GENTIL DONNA MIA (“INTO YOUR HANDS, MY GENTLE LADY”) Synopsis This nearly blasphemous sonnet begins with an echo of Christ’s words from the cross (Luke 23.46), as the speaker tells his lady, “Into your hands I commend my spirit,” which he says is dying so sadly that even love weeps piteously for it. It is the lady who made his soul subject to love, so that all he could say afterward was “Not as I will, but as you will,” this time echoing the words of Christ in Gethsemane (Luke 22.42). He tells his lady that he knows she despises all forms of injustice, and therefore his own death is more bitter to him, because it is undeserved. He ends by asking his lady to grant him sight of her, so that he may die in peace. Commentary This sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d e d e c, just as the previous sonnet (number 30) does, and as is that sonnet, it is probably addressed to Beatrice. In the octave Dante uses Christ’s words to suggest his relationship to Beatrice: She at one point, love at another, are put into the position of the speaker’s God (i.e., his Highest Good), while he, as is Christ, is suffering a martyr’s death unjustly for the sake of

Rime love. He excuses her in the sestet, since she hates injustice, but wishes to see her before he dies. The poem is stilnovist in style, extolling the lady as a divine being, though its focus on the lover’s pains suggests that it predates his shift in style to pure praise of the lady that Dante records in the Vita nuova.

32. E’ M’INCRESCE DI ME SÌ DURAMENTE (“I PITY MYSELF SO INTENSELY”) Synopsis This canzone opens with the speaker’s self-pity, which he says causes him as much pain as his suffering for love. He feels his very last sigh gathering in his heart, the heart that his lady’s eyes smote even as they seemed to say that their light would give peace. The lady’s eyes promised him peace and joy until they had completely captivated his mind, then they marched off under love’s banner. Now his soul is left dismayed to follow after, while the soul’s spouse, the speaker’s heart, is nearly dead. The speaker’s soul, full of unrequited love, is being driven from life by the god of love. As she begins her journey, God himself gives a pitying ear to her lamenting. She stays for the moment in the midst of the speaker’s heart, clinging to the life that will be gone as soon as she leaves, and there she makes her complaint against love while she embraces the vital spirits who weep over their impending loss of her. The image of his beloved still reigns in his mind, where love placed her, and she cares nothing for the torment she causes. She seems, in fact, not only more beautiful but more joyous than ever, and she laughs, triumphing over his poor soul and chasing it away. Thus the lady distresses him as she always has, but he feels less pain now that, as he is near death, his suffering is approaching its end. According to what he calls the book of his memory, the speaker says that when his lady was born, though he was still a child, he felt a strong sense of fear and fell stunned to the ground. If that book is true, than his greater spirit felt at that time a premonition that its death had entered the world. Finally, addressing the “gentle ladies” to whom he dedicates the poem, he says that once he saw the gentle lady, the noble power within him (his soul)

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felt the desire that the sight of her inspired. That power then addressed all his other faculties, telling them that the image of the lady who was already causing him fear would soon be set up as mistress within his mind, as soon as her eyes deigned to look upon the speaker. In his envoy Dante sends his canzone to the gentle ladies, whose eyes, he says, are adorned with beauty and whose minds dwell on love. In their presence he pardons the lady who is causing his death, though she has never shown him any compassion. Commentary One of Dante’s longer canzoni, this poem comprises six 14-line stanzas and an eight-line concluding envoi. The stanzas rhyme a b c a b c c d e d f f g g, and lines 2, 5, 10, and 12 are short seven-syllable lines. The envoy rhymes a b c b d d. This stilnovist poem takes a good deal of imagery from Scholastic philosophy, in particular the image of the woman that has been abstracted from the physical woman herself and lives within the speaker’s memory, which he presents, as he does in Chapter 2 of the Vita nuova, as a book. The action of the poem takes the form of a psychomachia in which different aspects of the speaker’s psyche are personified and enact an internal drama, in which the lady’s image terrorizes him, causing his heart to die and his soul to flee his body, first bidding farewell to the vital spirits within. These vital spirits are a clear sign of the influence of Cavalcanti on this poem, as is the final sigh within the speaker’s heart in the first stanza— Cavalcanti taught that sighs rid the body of vital spirits and therefore shortened one’s life. The overall negative view of love and the power of the lady’s eyes are also motifs of Cavalcanti’s poetry. One aspect of the poem looks forward to Dante’s more original poetry, however: He addresses the poem to “gentle ladies,” as he does in the most significant poems of the Vita nuova after turning from the kind of poetry that focused on his own suffering.

33. DONNE CH’AVETE INTELLETTO D’AMORE (“LADIES WHO HAVE INTELLIGENCE OF LOVE”) This highly significant canzone is discussed in Chapter 19 of the Vita nuova.

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34. AMORE E ‘L COR GENTIL SONO UNA COSA (“LOVE AND THE GRACIOUS HEART ARE A SINGLE THING”) This important sonnet, in which Dante paraphrases Guido Guinizelli’s highly influential canzone Al cor gentil, is discussed in Chapter 20 of the Vita nuova.

35. NE LI OCCHI PORTA LA MIA DONNA AMORE (“THE POWER OF LOVE BORNE IN MY LADY’S EYES”) Discussed in Chapter 21 of the Vita nuova.

36. VOI CHE PORTATE LA SEMBIANZA UMILE (“O YOU WHO BEAR A LOOK OF RESIGNATION”) Discussed as the first poem in Chapter 22 of the Vita nuova.

37. SE’ TU COLUI C’HAI TRATTATO SOVENTE (“ARE YOU THE ONE THAT OFTEN SPOKE TO US”) Discussed as the second poem in Chapter 22 of the Vita nuova.

38. ONDE VENITE VOI COSÌ PENSOSE? (“WHERE DO YOU COME FROM SO SORROWFULLY?”) Synopsis As this poem opens, Dante greets a sorrowing group of ladies and asks them for their courtesy to tell him whether they are come from his lady. He begs them not to scorn to speak with him, a grieving figure in the street, but begs that they give him news of his lady. No matter how painful the news is, he says he must hear it. Love has so often driven him away that now everything love does seems to hurt him. If he receives no consolation from the ladies, his vital spirits will all fly away. Commentary This sonnet was one of several apparently written on the occasion of the death of Beatrice’s father, when Dante was overcome by anxiety over Beatrice’s grief. Two of these sonnets appear in Chapter 22 of the Vita nuova. Dante’s reasons for choosing those sonnets over this one may have to do with his emphasis

here on his own emotions rather than on the lady’s qualities, a technique that he had come to regard as inferior because egocentric. The focus on the pain love causes him and the allusion to his vital spirits suggest once again the influence of Cavalcanti. The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d c d c d, with the octave devoted to the speaker’s greeting of the grieving ladies, and the sestet focused on the speaker’s suffering.

39. VOI, DONNE, CHE PIETOSO ATTO MOSTRATE (“LADIES WHO SHOW PITY IN YOUR BEARING”) Synopsis This sonnet begins with Dante’s addressing a group of kind ladies, asking them the identity of another lady who lies prostrate. He asks whether it is the lady whose image he holds in his heart. Her face, he says, is so strained and changed that she no longer resembles the one whose beauty was a blessing to all women. The ladies answer him, saying they are not surprised that he failed to recognize the lady, since they themselves had the same difficulty at first. But if he looks into the gentleness of her eyes, he will know her. Now weep no more, the ladies tell him, for he is already exhausted from grief. Commentary This sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d c d c d (exactly like number 8). The octave presents the speaker’s address to the ladies, while the sestet depicts their answer to him. Like number 38, this poem was written after the death of Beatrice’s father, FOLCO PORTINARI, in December 1289. This poem, too, was omitted from the Vita nuova, and probably for the same reason as the previous sonnet: The focus is too much on the speaker’s feelings and too little on the perfections of the lady. An interesting aspect of this poem is the recurrence of the image of the lady in his heart, which had previously appeared in poems 13, 25, and 32.

40. DONNA PIETOSA E DI NOVELLA ETATE (“A LADY OF TENDER YEARS, COMPASSIONATE”) This important canzone is discussed in Chapter 23 of the Vita nuova.

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41. UN DÌ SI VENNE A ME MALINCONIA (“ONE DAY MELANCHOLY CAME TO ME AND SAID”)

45. DI DONNE IO VIDI UNA GENTILE SCHIERA (“LAST ALL SAINTS’ DAY I SAW A LOVELY GROUP OF LADIES”)

Synopsis This allegorical sonnet begins with the personified abstraction of Melancholy, who goes to the speaker saying she intends to stay with him with Sorrow and Wrath her companions. The speaker tells her to leave, but she replies with Grecian arrogance. The speaker then sees love approaching, dressed in mourning clothes and weeping. The speaker calls to him, asking what has caused this grief, and love answers that their lady is dying.

Synopsis The speaker of this sonnet says that on the last All Saints’ Day, he saw a group of women, one in particular in the front with love at her right-hand side. The light from her eyes as she glanced about was like a flaming spirit, and the speaker, growing bold enough to look into her face, saw the image of an angel there. With kindness and gentleness she greeted all who were worthy of her greeting and thereby filled them all with joy. The speaker ends by expressing his belief that the lady must have been an important personage in Heaven, on earth for humankind’s salvation, and thus she brings blessings on all the women about her.

Commentary Like numbers 38 and 39, this sonnet rhymes a b a a b b a c d c d c d and was probably written in early 1290, about the same time as those other two poems. The octave presents the arrival of Melancholy and her associates, while the sestet depicts the approach of love in his mourning garb. The speaker actually sees love in the eighth line, and the enjambment of that line and the next provides a smooth transition from octave into sestet. The poem depicts a premonition of the death of Beatrice, similarly to the poem Donna pietosa e di novella etade in Chapter 22 of the Vita nuova. The reference to Greek arrogance may strike modern readers as odd, but it was a common prejudice in Western Christendom in the Middle Ages that the citizens of Byzantium were particularly haughty.

42. IO MI SENTI’ SVEGLIAR DENTRO A LO CORE (“I FELT A SLEEPING SPIRIT IN MY HEART”) Discussed in Chapter 24 of the Vita nuova.

43. TANTO GENTILE E TANTO ONESTA PARE (“SUCH SWEET DECORUM AND SUCH GENTLE GRACE”) Discussed as the first poem in Chapter 26 of the Vita nuova.

Commentary The lady of this sonnet is surely Beatrice, the “bringer of blessings,” who in this sonnet brings salvific joy to all around her. This sonnet is very much in the new style that Dante introduced in his Vita nuova, the style that focuses not on the lover’s suffering but on the lady’s perfections. Here, as in many stilnovist poems, the lady is seen as an angelic figure, one that seems to belong more in Heaven than on earth. Perhaps this is why the poem is set on All Saints’ Day, instituted to honor all saints, known and unknown. Beatrice, the poem suggests, belongs in this category. The poem rhymes a b a b a b a b c d c d c d. In the octave Dante introduces the lady and her entourage. In the sestet he describes her effect on those around her.

46. SÌ LUNGIAMENTE M’HA TENUTO AMORE (“SO LONG A TIME HAS LOVE KEPT ME A SLAVE”) Discussed in Chapter 27 of the Vita nuova.

44. VEDE PERFETTAMENTE ONNE SALUTE (“HE SEES AN AFFLUENCE OF JOY IDEAL”)

47. LI OCCHI DOLENTI PER PIETÀ DEL CORE (“THE EYES GRIEVING OUT OF PITY FOR THE HEART”)

Discussed as the second poem in Chapter 26 of the Vita nuova.

This major canzone is discussed in Chapter 31 of the Vita nuova.

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48. VENITE A INTENDER LI SOSPIRI MIEI (“NOW COME TO ME AND LISTEN TO MY SIGHS”) Discussed in Chapter 32 of the Vita nuova.

49. QUANTUNQUE VOLTE, LASSO, MI RIMEMBRA (“EACH TIME THE PAINFUL THOUGHT COMES TO MY MIND”) Discussed in Chapter 33 of the Vita nuova.

50. ERA VENUTA NE LA MENTE MIA (“INTO MY MIND HAD COME THE GRACIOUS IMAGE”) Discussed in Chapter 34 of the Vita nuova.

51. VIDERO LI OCCHI MIEI QUANTA PIETATE (“WITH MY OWN EYES I SAW HOW MUCH COMPASSION”) Discussed in Chapter 35 of the Vita nuova.

52. COLOR D’AMORE E DI PIETÀ SEMBIANTI (“COLOR OF LOVE, EXPRESSION OF COMPASSION”) Discussed in Chapter 36 of the Vita nuova.

53. L’AMARO LAGRIMAR CHE VOI FACESTE (“THE BITTER TEARS THAT YOU ONCE USED TO SHED”) Discussed in Chapter 37 of the Vita nuova.

54. GENTIL PENSERO CHE PARLA DI VUI (“A THOUGHT, GRACIOUS BECAUSE IT SPEAKS OF YOU”) Discussed in Chapter 38 of the Vita nuova.

55. LASSO! PER FORZA DI MOLTI SOSPIRI (“ALAS! BY THE FULL FORCE OF COUNTLESS SIGHS”) Discussed in Chapter 39 of the Vita nuova.

56. DEH PEREGRINI CHE PENSOSI ANDATE (“AH, PILGRIMS, MOVING PENSIVELY ALONG”) Discussed in Chapter 40 of the Vita nuova.

57. OLTRE LA SPERE CHE PIY LARGA GIRA (“BEYOND THE SPHERE THAT MAKES THE WIDEST ROUND”) This famous sonnet, the final poem of the Vita nuova, is discussed in Chapter 41 of that text.

58. PER QUELLA VIA CHE LA BELLEZZA CORRE (“ALONG THE WAY WHICH BEAUTY RUNS”) Synopsis The sonnet allegorizes certain Scholastic ideas of how the mind works. Along the path where beauty enters the mind to kindle love travels the image of a certain Lisetta, confident that she can win the speaker’s love. She reaches the foot of a tower, whose gate will open if the soul and mind agree to open it. But the way remains barred, and a voice warns Lisetta to leave. The voice continues to declare that another lady already reigns within that tower, given her scepter by love himself. At this rebuff Lisetta leaves this fortress of love and makes her way back blushing with shame. Commentary This sonnet may have been written in 1291–92, during the period when Dante was infatuated with the “gentle lady” who appears in Chapters 35–38 of the Vita nuova. If this is the case, then Lisetta is Dante’s senhal or pseudonym for the gentle lady. Some scholars, however, date the poem later, even as late as 1302, the beginning of the poet’s exile. In a particularly stilnovist manner the sonnet allegorizes the epistemological process of perception and will. The soul and mind must consent (i.e., the subject must exercise his will) if one is to respond favorably to the stimulation of beauty acting on the senses. Here since the speaker’s mind and soul have already accepted the speaker’s lady (presumably Beatrice—in this case, probably the image of the lost Beatrice), they cannot let in the new beauty. Though he may recognize her beauty, the speaker is ultimately unreceptive to Lisetta’s charms. The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d c c d c. The octave describes the process by which Lisetta’s beauty enters the poet’s mind but cannot be admitted to love’s fortress, and it ends with a voice telling

Rime her to leave. This provides a transition into the sestet, which explains why she cannot gain entrance and ends with Lisetta’s embarrassed retreat.

59. VOI CHE ‘NTENDENDO IL TERZO CIEL MOVETE (“YOU WHO THROUGH INTELLIGENCE MOVE THE THIRD SPHERE”) This famous canzone forms the opening of Book 2 of the Convivio and is discussed at that point.

60. VOI CHE SAVETE RAGIONAR D’AMORE (“O YOU WHO KNOW HOW TO REASON ABOUT LOVE”) Synopsis Dante begins by addressing this poem to those who know how to speak of love, asking that they listen to his ballata, which concerns a disdainful lady who has stolen his heart. In the first stanza the speaker describes how the lady disdains anyone who looks at her, and how the cruel image around her eyes causes others to lower their gaze. Yet within those eyes dwells a form of beauty that attracts the noblest souls and inspires them to ask her for mercy while causing them to sigh pitifully. In stanza 2 the speaker says that the lady seems to be saying she will not humble herself before those who seek to look into her eyes, for in those eyes she carries love himself, who has wounded her with his shafts. The speaker speculates that the lady keeps her eyes from others so that she can look into them herself, as a woman does in a mirror when she wants to admire her own beauty. In the final stanza the speaker says he has no hope that this hard-hearted lady will ever, from kindness or pity, turn her gaze upon others. But no matter how much she hides the love that lives in her eyes, the speaker believes his desire will ultimately overcome her scorn. Commentary In this ballata the four-line ripresa sums up the theme of the poem (the scornful lady whom the speaker loves) and rhymes a b b a. The stanza that follows rhymes c d c d d e e a, and the a-rhyme similarly concludes both of the following stanzas. On the surface the poem is a fairly typical courtly-love song about love for a disdainful lady, with the mirror image of

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stanza 2 suggesting the Narcissus theme sometimes used in courtly love poetry, although Dante also uses the mirror image in Canto 27 of the Purgatorio, where in a dream the pilgrim Dante sees Rachel, representing the contemplative life, contemplating her own eyes in a mirror (ll. 106–108). This has led some scholars to interpret this ballata allegorically, with the lady representing Philosophy (i.e., contemplation), as she does in the canzoni in the Convivio. Philosophy is a difficult mistress and does not yield easily to her lovers. But the speaker’s desire—to look into the eyes of Philosophy and penetrate her secrets—cannot be quelled by that difficulty.

61. AMOR CHE NE LA MENTE MI RAGIONA (“LOVE, THAT SPEAKS TO ME WITHIN MY MIND”) This canzone forms the opening of Book 3 of the Convivio and is discussed at that point.

62. PAROLE MIE CHE PER LO MONDO SIETE (“WORDS OF MINE THAT HAVE GONE ABOUT THE WORLD”) Synopsis Dante opens this sonnet by addressing his own poems, beginning with his canzone Voi che ’ntendendo (number 59)—the poems that have become well known through the world. He tells them all to go to the lady for whom they were written (i.e., Philosophy) and tell her that while they may belong to her, she will never see any additional words from Dante. But they are not to stay with this lady, because love is not there. Instead they should wander elsewhere, wearing mourning clothes as do their older sisters. When they go to a lady worthy of love, they are to fall at her feet and say they have been sent to honor her. Commentary Alluding to his allegorical canzone (Voi che ’ntendendo) that acts as the first poem of the Convivio, written to the “gentle lady” whom he identifies as Philosophy in that text, Dante here rejects all poems written in that vein. Reflecting the mood of number 60, the poet here treats Philosophy as an unattainable lover whom he has decided to leave. When he tells his poems to dress in mourning like

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as do elder sisters, he has in mind either his poems on the death of Beatrice or his poems on unrequited love. The fact that he tells the verses to prostrate themselves before a worthy lady may suggest the latter is more probable. The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d c c d c, with the octave telling the poems what to say to the haughty Lady Philosophy, and the sestet telling them to leave her and find another mistress.

63. O DOLCI RIME CHE PARLANDO ANDATE (“O YOU SWEET POEMS THAT GO ABOUT SPEAKING OF THAT NOBLE LADY”) Synopsis This poem, apparently intended to be a companion to the previous sonnet (62), begins in a similar manner, with the poet addressing his previous poems. He tells these poems, which go around praising the gentle lady who gives honor to all women, that one is about to join them whom they will take as their brother. But the poet tells them not to heed him, for there is nothing truthful in what he says. If, however, these verses have been moved by what their new brother has said to approach their lady, they should go to her humbly and give her greetings from one who grieves and wishes to see her, his eyes’ desire.

woman who has come to earth to show the beauties of the place that she has left. In the first stanza she reveals she has arrived from Heaven itself and will return there. Anyone who does not fall in love with her when he sees her has no understanding of what love is, since everything that makes for beauty was given to her when Nature asked God for her—the God who has now sent her to be the companion of the ladies she is addressing. In stanza 2 she goes on to declare that every star of Heaven pours its light and virtue into her eyes. This kind of beauty has never been among human beings before, and it cannot be known except by one with understanding who harbors love in his heart. In the last stanza the speaker is the poet, who says that the previous words can be read on the face of the young angel he has just seen. He looked upon her too long and intensely, and now feels he may be about to die, because love, whom he saw in the lady’s eyes, has wounded him so severely that he can find no peace from weeping.

Commentary This sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d e d c e, with the octave telling his verses to ignore their latest brother, and the sestet telling them to visit the lady and plead their author’s case. The description of the lady in line 2 as one who gives honor to all womankind sounds more like Dante’s poems in praise of Beatrice than his poems concerning Philosophy, and there is nothing in this sonnet to suggest an allegorical reading, except for its apparent connection with the previous poem.

Commentary In this ballata the three-line ripresa introduces the idea of the lady’s discourse on her heavenly origin. The ripresa rhymes a b b and is followed by a stanza rhyming c d c d d b b. Each subsequent stanza also repeats the b-rhyme couplet at the end. The poem is a quite conventional stilnovist poem, with the lady identified as a heavenly being made to be the companion of earthly women, and the poet sorely wounded by the love that dwells in the lady’s eyes. What is quite unusual in the poem is the fact that the lady herself speaks—or seems to. As the last stanza makes clear, the words of the ripresa and first two stanzas are words he himself is reading in the lady’s face—it seems she never really says a word. Still the lady’s praise of herself may have been unpalatable for Dante’s readers, and the motif remains highly unusual in Dante’s poetry.

64. I’ MI SON PARGOLETTA BELLA E NOVA (“I AM A YOUNG GIRL, LOVELY AND MARVELOUS”)

65. PERCHÈ TI VEDI GIOVINETTA E BELLA (“BECAUSE YOU SEE YOU’RE SO YOUNG AND FAIR”)

Synopsis In this ballata the beautiful lady herself speaks. She begins by introducing herself as a lovely young

Synopsis In this brief ballata the speaker addresses a lady, who, he says, realizes how her youth and beauty

Rime awake love in men and as a result has become haughty and aloof. She has become like a stone toward the speaker and, he says, endeavors to kill him. She does this only to test whether it is really possible for someone to die of love. While she finds the speaker to be the most completely in the snare of her beauty, she gives his pain no thought at all. The speaker ends by wishing the lady the same suffering he is experiencing. Commentary A one-stanza ballata like number 22, this short poem may have been written about the same time as the previous poem, with the same young and beautiful lady as the subject. Scholars have put these two poems, plus the next one (number 66), in a group dealing with the lady referred to as pargoletta, a youthful lady with whom Dante may have been involved after the death of Beatrice. The ripressa rhymes a b b, and the poem continues c d c d d b b, ending with the b-rhyme couplet that ends the ripressa. In the first couplet the poet accuses the lady of having a heart of stone; in the concluding couplet he wishes her the same pain he feels, presumably from her own hard-hearted lover.

66. CHI GUARDERÀ GIÀ MAI SANZA PAURA (“WHO WILL EVER LOOK WITHOUT FEAR”) Synopsis Another poem dealing with the pargoletta, this sonnet begins by asking whether anyone dare look into the face of this young beauty, since looking into it struck the speaker so that he is nearly dead. He has had the misfortune, he says, to have been the one whose fate has shown others that they must not dare look at the lady. The speaker’s martyrdom seems to have been foreordained, since it is better for one to die in order to save all others, who will see his example. Therefore he has taken in the power of death from her through his eyes—just as a pearl takes in the power of a star. Commentary This sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d d d c c, the octave describing the speaker’s death at the sight of the youthful lady, the sestet detailing this experi-

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ence as a foreordained martyrdom. The sonnet is unusual in having only two rhymes in the sestet, and in using a triplet of d-rhymes followed by a couplet of c-rhymes. Emphasis is thereby put on the triplet, which contains an allusion to the martyrdom of Christ: As JOSEPH CAIAPHAS declared that Christ must die for the sake of the Jewish nation (John 11.50), so the speaker of the poem must die for the sake of others who may be drawn to love the lady. The figure of the poem’s final couplet depends on the reader’s knowledge of medieval astrological theory (based on PLATO’s Timaeus), which held that gems and other precious stones attain their particular properties when the appropriate star shines upon them. It was a conventional stilnovist image, used in Guinizelli’s famous canzone Al cor gentil (ll. 11–40), where he compares the noble heart to a precious stone, and love to the star that kindles the stone’s virtues.

67. AMOR, CHE MOVI TUA VERTÙ DA CIELO (“LOVE, WHO SENDS DOWN YOUR POWER FROM HEAVEN”) Synopsis This canzone actually expands on the image that ends the previous sonnet. Love (allegorically the planet Venus) sends its influence down to earth, and just as the sun drives away cold and darkness, so the influence of love drives baseness and ill humor from the heart. All the good we do is inspired by love, and without love we would not have the power for good, just as a painting hung in the shadows cannot show its color and beauty. The speaker now identifies himself as one whose heart is struck by love’s power, as a result of which he is led to admire all things of beauty. Because of this a certain beautiful young woman has entered into his soul and made him captive. As water acts as a lens to reflect and focus light, so has she reflected love onto the speaker, and the love has been focused in her eyes. In the third stanza the speaker speaks more of his admiration for this young lady. His fantasy sees her as noble, beautiful, and worthy, just as she truly is. But he realizes that his mind is not in itself capable of such high apprehension: It is only through the power of love that he is enabled to go so far

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beyond what nature has granted him. The lady’s beauty shows the power and true nature of love, which can only have an effect on a subject worthy to receive it, in the same way that fire on earth displays the power and warmth of the sun. In stanza 4 the speaker moves into a direct plea to love. All things on earth draw their goodness from him. The speaker asks him to understand how unbearable his life has become through the beauty of this lady and prays for pity. Make the lady conscious of his desire to see her, he asks love, and do not allow her to destroy him through her lovely youth. She does not yet realize how beautiful she is, nor how much the speaker loves her, nor how his peace depends solely on her eyes. In the final stanza the speaker continues to pray to the god of love, saying that if love helps him, love will gain great honor and the speaker will gain a precious gift. The speaker is no longer able to defend his own life, for the lady so assaults his vital spirits that he cannot help but die soon, unless love steps in to save him. He asks love to make the lady feel his power, for she deserves it. In fact she deserves all good things, having been born to reign over any mind that looks upon her. Commentary This fairly long canzone—five stanzas of 15 lines each—deals with significant aspects of love and does so in a philosophical way, in the manner of the stilnovisti. Dante uses learned astronomical imagery to explain the influence of love on his heart, though the influence of Cavalcanti is present also in the dire consequences his love of the lady may have on his health. Each stanza of the canzone rhymes a b b c a b b c c d d e f e f, with lines 2, 6, 11, and 14 containing seven rather than the more common 11 syllables. Structurally the stanza divides into what Dante calls a frons of eight lines and a cauda of seven, the frons further subdividing into two four-line pedes (see analysis of number 9). Thus to illustrate in the first stanza of this poem the first four lines introduce love as sending its influence from Heaven, and the second four compare its effect on the heart to the sun’s influence in the world. The cauda then expands on this influence, stressing the idea that every good results from love’s influence.

68. IO SENTO SÌ D’AMOR LA GRAN POSSANZA (“SO MUCH DO I FEEL LOVE’S MIGHTY POWER”) Synopsis In the first stanza of this canzone the speaker says that love’s power is so strong in him that he cannot stand it long. The power of love increases while his own strength diminishes. Still if love acted as forcefully as the speaker desired, then his own natural strength could not endure it. But, the speaker says, if one is rewarded for one’s goodwill, then he deserves to receive more life from his lady’s radiant eyes, which give him comfort wherever he feels love’s power. The rays from his lady’s eyes know the way into his own eyes, and these rays comfort him as they retrace their steps to where they left love in his soul when they entered him before. When her eyes look on him, they give him solace. When they turn from him, they can only cause the lady loss, since the speaker values himself only insofar as he can serve her. Thus if he believed he could serve her best by leaving her, he would do it, even though it would kill him. In the third stanza the speaker expresses his certainty that it is true love that inspires him, since the greatest possible love is to lay down one’s life for another. This love was born in him the instant he perceived and desired the beauty of the lady’s face, where all beauty resides. He is a servant, and content to be the servant of his lady, no matter what her mood. He can serve her even if she does not desire his service. At this point her youth will not show him mercy, but he hopes that in time reason will change her mind, if he can only live that long. In the fourth stanza the speaker considers how his noble desire for the lady inspires him to noble actions and suggests that this in itself is more reward than he deserves. It also seems wrong to style himself a servant, since his service itself seems a reward when performed in the presence of her eyes. Since his aim is to tell the truth, he says, he must give this account of his service: Although he strives to be worthy, he is not thinking of himself but rather of the one whom he serves, since in all he does he is striving for her glory. This is the great honor love has given him.

Rime In stanza 5 the speaker declares that love alone could have made him worthy of this lady, who does not return his love. She is simply indifferent to the loving mind that cannot live an hour apart from her. No matter how many times he sees her, he always finds new beauties in her, and the more beauty he finds, the more love’s power increases in him. This explains why he is in this state, being accustomed to periods of pain and joy, which last from the time he loses sight of her eyes until the time he sees them again. In an envoi Dante addresses his “beautiful” song. If it is like its creator, he says, it will not be proud, even if it has a right to be. He tells the song to choose a way that is fitting to its worth. If a nobleman wants to invite the song in, Dante tells the song to find out who the man’s friends are, since one can judge a man by the company he keeps. But the song should also beware of one with evil intentions hiding among the virtuous. Avoid those prone to vice, he tells his song, for it is unwise to befriend them. Dante adds a second envoy to this canzone as well, which builds more specifically on the assertions of the previous one. He tells the song to seek out the three most virtuous men in the city. The song is to greet the first two and try to convince the third to abandon the wicked company he is keeping. Tell this one, he adds, that the good do not struggle with the good until they have defeated the evil. Only a fool will refuse to turn from his folly for fear of shame, since avoiding dishonor is not shameful. If one flees from dishonor, one also flees from shame. Commentary This canzone has characteristics of Dante’s earlier poetry, those composed before the stilnovist period. The feudal imagery of servant and lord is conventional in the poetry of the troubadours, and in the Sicilian school of Giacomo da Lentino, while the antitheses (such as the pain and joy of love in the fifth stanza) are reminiscent of the Tuscan school of Guittone d’Arezzo. Still scholars generally date this poem in the mid-1290s, along with the previous canzone (number 67), although the latter shows far more of the influence of Cavalcanti.

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The 16-line stanzas of the song rhyme a b c a b c c d d e c d d e f f, with the second and fourth lines (the b-rhyme lines) containing seven syllables rather than 11. This creates a six-line frons, divided into two three-line pedes, and a 10-line cauda for each stanza. The second envoy takes the rhyme scheme of the stanzaic cauda. It is that second envoy that is the most curious aspect of the poem. The question, of course, is the identity of the third honest man, whom Dante urges to leave his wicked companions. Some scholars believe that this third man is Dante’s “first friend,” Guido Cavalcanti, though the details of Guido’s association with bad company are unclear.

69. LE DOLCI RIME D’AMOR CH’I SOLIA (“THE TENDER RHYMES OF LOVE”) This canzone forms the opening of Book 4 of the Convivio and is discussed at that point.

70. POSCIA CH’AMOR EL TUTTO M’HA LASCIATO (“SINCE LOVE HAS COMPLETELY ABANDONED ME”) Synopsis Dante begins this canzone by declaring that love has abandoned him, having taken pity on his weeping heart, even though the speaker himself says he had been happy and never asked to be released. Thus loveless, he says that the subject of his poem will be a base quality to which people have begun to apply a word suggesting goodness—that is, the quality called “charm.” True charm is a rare quality fit for an emperor and is the sign of inner virtue. The speaker believes that by defending the term charm, he will convince love to accept him into his grace again. In stanza 2 the speaker asserts that some people believe they can gain admiration and immortality by squandering all their wealth. But no intelligent observer finds these actions worthy, and ceasing these inanities would be better for them and the fools who are impressed by their foolishness, for it is certainly foolish to waste money on drink, lust, and expensive clothes. Those who are wise look for intelligence and nobility, not outward show.

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In the third stanza the speaker goes on to criticize those who laugh incessantly, trying to impress people with their quick wits, though the only ones they impress are those who do not really understand what they are laughing about. These men pretend to be refined and enjoy being admired at a distance. They never truly love ladies of real worth but spend time in flippant conversation. Rather than court women in the proper way, they act like thieves and try to steal quick and meaningless sexual gratification. But women have not so lost their courtesy that they have become like beasts. Stanza 4 is the turning point of the poem. This charm has been so badly misinterpreted—and far more examples than those he has listed could be cited—that the speaker now purposes to define its true nature. He has learned of true charm, he says, from a gentle lady who showed it in everything she did. He swears by love itself that true praise can only be earned by virtuous acts. Since all agree that charm is praiseworthy, it must be virtuous itself or related to virtue. In stanza 5 Dante concedes that charm is not pure virtue, since it is not important for the clergy or for scholars. It is therefore a mixed quality, clothing one man well and another ill. True charm is born from joy, love, and proper behavior, and in this it is like the sun, which also comprises three qualities: heat, light, and beauty. Stanza 6 goes on to describe other ways in which charm is like the sun. The sun shines its light on earthly matter, which responds according to its nature. So charm affects those disposed to receive its virtues differently than those who are base. Charm gives virtue to noble hearts. Dante ends the stanza by chiding those he calls would-be gentlemen, who are nothing but depraved enemies of the sun, prince of stars. The analogy continues into the last stanza, where the true example of charm is said to give and receive gladly, as the sun itself, which gives light to the stars or receives their help. He is slow to anger, keeps company only with the worthy, and is charming in his speech. People of worth enjoy his company, and he is unconcerned about the opinions of the mob. He is not made haughty by honors, but he wins praise when he asserts himself. The

current generation, unfortunately, behaves in just the opposite way. Commentary At 133 lines one of the longest of Dante’s canzoni, this poem consists of seven 19-line stanzas rhyming a a b b c d a a b b c d d e e f g g f, with lines 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, and 18 having only seven rather than the standard 11 syllables. Lines 2 and 4 of each stanza contain only five syllables—the only place in Dante’s lyrics that five-syllable lines occur. The stanzas thus divide into a frons of 12 lines (containing two six-line pedes) and a seven-line cauda. Dante also uses internal rhymes in lines 1–3 and lines 7–9. The many short lines and the internal rhymes give the poem a tone of agitated urgency, as if Dante is expressing a deep annoyance with those who act with false charm and pervert the true meaning of the word. The word translated here as charm is the Italian word leggiadria, a word with no precise English equivalent, which connotes a kind of graciousness or elegance of behavior but that might also have a secondary connotation of “frivolity.” I have here adopted Foster and Boyde’s translation charm. Diehl translates the word as gallantry. Modern Italian-English dictionaries translate the word as simply loveliness. Its meaning for Dante seems akin to “courtesy,” but without the deeper ethical connotations that word contained for medieval writers. Dante’s reference to those who exhibit this quality by squandering all their goods may allude to the infamous “spendthrifts’ brigade” of Siena whom Dante condemns in Canto 29 of the Inferno. Precisely what Dante means by saying in the beginning of the poem that love has abandoned him is unclear. He implies that he was in love with a lady who has spurned him. But since this poem seems to have been written around the time of the other canzoni that he uses in the Convivio, some scholars suggest that the love he speaks of is the love of wisdom, and that he is temporarily unable, through no desire of his own, to pursue his study of philosophy. Perhaps this was one of the canzoni Dante intended to use in later books of the Convivio. As for the poem’s ending, unlike

Rime most of his other canzoni, this one does not end with an envoy since, as the speaker says in line 69, he really does not know who the audience of the poem might be.

71. DUE DONNA IN CIMA DE LA MENTE MIA (“TWO WOMEN HAVE COME TO THE SUMMIT OF MY MIND”) Synopsis In this sonnet, in a kind of psychomachia, two women hold a debate in the poet’s mind. The first is accompanied by courtesy, worthiness, decorum, and moral rectitude. The second has beauty, charm, and true nobility. The speaker, thanks to his lord, the god of love, finds himself at the ladies’ feet. Now the ladies, Beauty and Virtue, ask the speaker’s intellect how it is possible for a heart to love two ladies equally and perfectly. Then love himself, the fount of noble rhetoric, answers that one can love both Beauty for its delight and Virtue for its noble effects. Commentary The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d c d c d, with the octave introducing Beauty and her companions in the first quatrain and Virtue with her attendants in the second. The sestet depicts the question posed to the intellect, and the answer supplied by love. The precise meaning of the ALLEGORY here is not absolutely clear. Dante structures the poem around a conventional demande d’amour in the courtly love tradition: Can one love two people at one? Allegorically Beauty and Virtue may represent Dante’s poetic interest in courtly love and in philosophy. Other scholars have suggested the two figures represent the contemplative life (the contemplation of beauty) and the active life (virtuous moral action), and therefore Dante’s conviction that both lives were valuable.

72. CHI UDISSE TOSSIR LA MALFATATA (“ANYONE WHO HEARD THE COUGHING”) Synopsis This sonnet, and the two following, were part of a spirited exchange Dante engaged in with Forese Donati, a kinsman of Dante’s wife and brother of

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the notorious CORSO DONATI, leader of the Black GUELPH faction in Florence. Here Dante says that if anyone were to hear the coughing of Nella, the wife of Forese (whom Dante calls “Bicci”), one might think that she had spent the winter far in the north, where the cold creates crystals. Nella freezes even in the middle of August, and she cannot get warm even if she wears her stockings to bed, because her bed covering is inadequate. Nella’s cough and cold are not the result of her aging, however, but rather of the fact that she lacks something in her nest. Her poor mother, who has many other troubles, weeps and says that for a couple of dried figs she could have married Nella off to Count Guido. Commentary Forese was a close friend of Dante’s, as is obvious in Canto 23 of the PURGATORIO, where the pilgrim Dante is reunited with him. There he speaks with great respect of Nella, Forese’s coughing wife of this sonnet. Because Forese had died in 1296, it is likely that these three poems were written between 1293 and 1296. While some scholars have suggested that the poems were evidence that Dante and Forese had become estranged, it seems to me those scholars are missing the playful tone of the poems, in which the two friends were essentially giving one another a public “roast.” The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d e c d e. In the octave Dante outlines Nella’s plight. In the sestet he examines the cause of the problem. What is lacking in Nella’s bed, Dante implies, is Forese’s ability to perform his duty as a husband. The “low” comic tone and language of these poems are something new for Dante, and he would utilize this style again in some of the later cantos of the INFERNO. Forese wrote a response to this poem, in which he explains how he himself awoke in a fit of coughing because he was too poor to cover himself. When he went off looking for money, he ran into the ghost of Dante’s father, who was tied in the “knot of Solomon,” and begged Forese to tell Dante to untie the knot. The precise meaning of this is obscure, but some scholars have suggested that it implies Dante’s father was a usurer, others that he was the

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victim of some wrong for which Dante should have sought revenge.

73. BEN TI FARANNO IL NODO SALAMONE (“PARTRIDGE BREASTS, YOUNG BICCI, WILL TRUSS YOU IN SOLOMON’S KNOT”) Synopsis Dante answers Forese by attacking his gluttony. Partridge breasts, mutton loins, and the like, will put Forese into this inescapable “knot of Solomon.” The mutton will have its revenge when its skin, in the form of vellum sheets on which debts were recorded, lands Forese in jail at San Simone (the location of Florence’s prison). Even if Forese gives up his expensive heavy drinking, it is too late to escape the consequences of his debts. But Dante has heard that Forese actually has another profession through which he can make some money and thereby stave off his arrest for debt. But that profession did not do Stagno’s sons much good (Stagno’s sons were hanged for theft). Commentary Dante takes the image of Solomon’s knot and uses it as a metaphor for imprisonment. In this sonnet he calls Forese a glutton and a thief (indeed in his Comedy he places Forese on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory, the terrace of the gluttons). The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c c d c c d. In the octave Dante abuses Forese for the gluttony and drunkenness that have led to his danger of imprisonment for debt; in the sestet he suggests that Forese might take to thieving to pay his debts but fears such a career could lead to Forese’s hanging. Forese countered this sonnet with another that chastised Dante for his own poverty and debt. Forese tells him to go and pay back the hospital of San Gallo and tells Dante to stop asking him for loans if he thinks the Donati are so poor. He suggests that Dante can probably live on what he has accrued by begging at the Castello Altrafonte, near Florence’s Ponte Vecchio. He predicts that Dante’s half brother and sister (Francesco and Tana) will have to support him eventually and hopes he does not end up like his uncle Belluzzo. He predicts Dante will end up in the Pinti poorhouse, a workhouse supported by the Donati family.

74. BICCI NOVEL, FIGLIUOL DI NON SO CUI (“YOUNG BICCI, SON OF I DON’T KNOW WHO”) Synopsis Dante’s third sonnet to Forese begins with an accusation that his friend is illegitimate—only Forese’s mother, Tessa, can tell him who his real father is. Again he suggests that Forese has eaten so much that he now has to steal in order to pay his debts, and that anyone carrying a purse recognizes him as “scarface,” a known thief, so they all steer clear of him when they see him. All this time an old man—who is related to Forese as Joseph was to Christ—lies in bed and worries that Forese will be caught in his larceny. The last two lines are obscure and idiomatic but may suggest that “Bicci” and his thieving brothers treat their wives as “sisters”—that is, that, as Forese does, all of the Donati neglect their wives, or even that, as Tessa has, all the women in the Donati family have children with men other than their husbands. Commentary This sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d c d c d. The octave accuses Forese of illegitimacy and reiterates the charges of gluttony and theft. The sestet introduces Forese’s father and suggests the immorality of all the wives of his family. Forese’s reply is a reiteration of his charge that Dante’s father had been a usurer and that Dante had taken no revenge for him. Foresee suggests that Dante made his peace with the ones who wronged Allighiero far too quickly and that he has set a new precedent that we should regard one who beats us with a stick as our friend and brother. As Dante depicted Forese as a well-known thief, he in turn implies that Dante is notorious for his cowardice.

75. IO DANTE A TE CHE M’HAI COSÌ CHIAMATO (“I DANTE, TO WHOM YOU HAVE APPEALED”) Synopsis Here Dante replies to a sonnet anonymously addressed to him as an authority on love. In that sonnet a friend of Dante’s is said to have complained to a lady, using Dante’s poetry as support

Rime (apparently alluding to some poem of Dante’s in his attempt to woo the woman). But the lady wounded him sorely (presumably denied his suit), and now the friend asks Dante to avenge him. The lady, the unnamed poet says, is youthful, and graceful and carries love in her eyes. Dante responds in sonnet form. He names himself (the only time he names himself in any of his lyrics) and says that the writer’s plight has distressed him. He asks for the name of the woman whom the anonymous poet had addressed in his name, suggesting that a letter from him to the lady might help heal the wounds the poet has suffered. However, Dante expresses the belief that if the lady is not yet married, she will eventually take back the hurtful words she gave to the poet. From what the poet has said of her, Dante believes that the lady must be as innocent as an angel in Paradise. Commentary This poem could easily have been written very early in Dante’s poetic career, except for the fact that he is here addressed as an authority, making it likely that the poem is somewhat later, certainly after the Vita nuova. The brief description of the lady suggests an angelic stilnovist beloved. The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d c d c d. In the octave Dante responds to the request and offers to write to the lady. In the sestet he expresses some optimism with the expectation that the angelic lady will relent and take back her words.

76. MESSER BRUNETTO, QUESTA PULZELLETTA (“MESSER BRUNETTO, THIS YOUNG GIRL”) Synopsis Like the previous sonnet to Lippo (number 8), this one seems to have been attached to a longer poem that Dante was sending to Brunetto. This attached poem Dante introduces as a young girl, sent to spend Easter with Brunetto, but not to eat dinner. She is sent to be read. Nor can she be read quickly, Dante says, but the meaning must be coaxed out of her slowly and with repeated readings. If the poem is too difficult for Brunetto to understand, Dante suggests, he should check with some of the “Brother Alberts” in his circle and try to

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study the poem without laughing. If the poem still presents problems, Dante tells Brunetto to take it to the house of Master Giano. Commentary Which poem Dante attached to this preface for Brunetto is unknown. Traditionally the recipient is thought to be Brunetto Brunelleschi of Florence, although there were in fact two men by that name in Dante’s city. One was a wealthy mogul who joined the Black party; the other was a less famous knight and ambassador. In either case Dante seems to be belittling Brunetto’s intelligence, with the suggestions that his poem will be too difficult for him. The “Brother Alberts” he alludes to are apparently friars or monks with some facility at interpreting knotty biblical texts. Master Giano is a mystery. There may have been a well-known dunce by that name in Florence. On the other hand some scholars have suggested that the reference is to Jean de Meun (famous author of the Roman de la Rose) with the ironic suggestion that if Brunetto does not understand Dante’s poem, he should take a look at Jean’s, which is even more complex. The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d e c d e. The octave introduces the poem and suggests its difficulty; the sestet recommends that Brunetto consult Brother Albert or Giano about it.

77. IO SON VENUTO AL PUNTO DE LA ROTA (“I HAVE COME TO THAT POINT ON THE WHEEL”) Synopsis Dante opens this canzone with a complicated astronomical description of the winter season. The circles of Heaven have reached the season when the constellation of Gemini, the Twins, rises when the Sun dips below the horizon. Venus, the planet of love, is obscured by the Sun’s setting rays, and the cold planet of Saturn is most visible. Even in this cold season, however, not a single thought of love has left the speaker’s mind, which he says is now hard as stone, containing as it does images of stone. In his second stanza the speaker describes the wind that, traveling across the Ethiopian sands, will blow in clouds that engulf the entire northern

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hemisphere and produce frozen snow or gloomy rain, making the saddened sky weep. Still love, though it pulls in its nets in the face of the storm, does not desert the speaker, because his cruel lady is so beautiful. Stanza 3 notes that the migrating birds have left for warmer weather, deserting the land where the seven frozen stars of the Great Bear never set. Other birds have ceased singing until springtime, unless they cry out with grief. The animals who are by nature drawn to reproduce are in this season released from that drive. But the speaker’s love has not slackened, because it does not alter with time. In the fourth stanza the speaker notes that the leaves, drawn forth in spring by Aries the Ram, have now turned brown along with the grass. Every branch is bare, except those of the evergreens, whose color lasts year round. The fragile flowers have all died from the frost as well. But the thorn of love remains in the speaker’s heart, where he is now determined to keep it forever. In stanza 5 the speaker says that the streams now are all mist covered from vapors released by the caverns of the earth. Paths that were dry in summer are now streambeds and will remain so all winter long. The earth is covered with ice as the cold locks in the waters. Still the speaker has not retreated one step from his love—because, as he says, if the pain of love is this sweet, then death must be even sweeter. In his tornada Dante addresses his song, asking what will happen to him when spring arrives. If he is the only being with love in the dead of winter, what will he be when the season of love arrives? He will be a man of marble, he says, if his beloved has a heart of marble. Commentary This poem, and the three following, are known by scholars as the “rime petrose,” so called because in each of them the woman is referred to by the term petra or “stone.” The poems to the “Stone Lady” present the woman as hard and the speaker’s love as unrequited. Whether the lady existed outside Dante’s imagination can never be known, but it is generally agreed that these poems were written after the death of Beatrice, in the mid- to late

1290s. The astronomical details of the first stanza of this poem suggest that it was written in December 1296. Foster and Boyde note that this poem relies on the medieval topos common to courtly love poetry in which the lover’s feelings are seen as reflecting or contrasting the natural world (2. 259). Here, each stanza emphasizes the cold and barrenness of winter, contrasting with the love that will not leave the speaker’s heart. The lady herself, however, seems to be in perfect harmony with the season, since she is presented as hard as a stone in the first stanza and possessing a heart of marble at the end of the tornada. The structure of the poem is fascinating, as Dante follows the Neoplatonic scale of being, moving from the great spheres of the heavens in the first stanza to the sublunary sphere in the second, to the world of animals in the third, plants in the fourth, and inanimate matter in the fifth. All of nature’s hierarchy responds to the winter, except the speaker himself. The stanzas of this canzone rhyme a b c a b c c d e e d f f, the two a b c tercets forming the two feet or pedes of the six-line frons, and the seven-line cauda containing one seven-syllable line in verse 10. The seven-line tornada follows the pattern of the cauda. The poem is interesting for its use of rime equivoche, identical rhymes with different meanings, for the final f-rhyme couplet of each stanza. This kind of rhyme was a feature of Guittone d’Arezzo’s Tuscan school, but here Foster and Boyde have suggested that Dante was influenced chiefly by the verse of the troubadour Arnaut Daniel, whom he seems to have read in the original about this time (2. 258).

78. AL POCO GIORNO E AL GRAN CERCHIO D’OMBRA (“TO THE SHORT DAY AND THE GREAT CIRCLE OF SHADOW”) Synopsis This is one of Dante’s more famous poems addressed to the “Stone Lady.” In the first stanza the speaker reiterates the situation of the previous canzone (number 77): He has come to the shadows of winter, when the hills are white with snow and the grass is dead, yet his love remains unchanged,

Rime being rooted in the stone that speaks and acts as a woman does. In stanza 2 he says that this woman remains frozen like snow, unmoved as a stone, even when springtime regenerates the hills, the grass, and the flowers. Depicting the lady in the spring in stanza 3, the speaker says that when she wears a garland of grass, the green grass mixed with her golden hair, love goes to dwell there and makes him forget every other woman. Love, he says, has locked him between two small hills more securely than cement may lock a stone. The lady’s beauty, he says in stanza 4, has more power than a precious stone, and no healing herb can cure the wounds she inflicts. Therefore the speaker has run from her, across plains and hills, but can find no refuge where her powerful light does not shine. In the fifth stanza the speaker recalls having seen his lady dressed in green, so beautiful that she would have inspired even a stone to love her as much as he loves her very shadow. He has dreamed about her, standing in a meadow enclosed by hills and as much in love as any woman has ever been. But, as he says in the sixth stanza, that will never be: Rivers will run back into hills before the green wood that is the young lady catches fire. As for the speaker, he would sleep on stone and eat grass just for the privilege of watching her dress cast a shadow. The poem ends with a three-line envoy or concluding stanza, in which the speaker claims that even when the hills cast their darkest shadow, the lady overcomes it with her youthful green, just as grass covers the hard stone. Commentary This remarkable poem is a sestina and is modeled on the poem Lo ferm voler by the troubadour Arnaut Daniel (Arnaud). Dante discusses the form in De vulgari eloquentia 2.13.2. The sestina uses six key words, one at the end of each line of its six-line stanzas. There is no rhyme scheme, but the same six words appear in each stanza (here the words are ombra, colli, erba, verde, petra, and donna—i.e., “shadow,” “hills,” “grass,” “green,” “stone,” and “woman”). The device is known as parole-rima, in which identical words with identical meanings rhyme with one another.

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The six key words do not appear in the same order in each stanza, however. Instead they follow a pattern called retrogradatio cruciata by medieval Latin rhetoricians: In this pattern the key word ending the last line of the first stanza becomes the final word in the first line of the second stanza, with all other key words moving one line later in the sequence. By the sixth and final stanza each key word has appeared once at the end of each of the six lines of the stanzas. In the three-line envoy all six key words appear again, but three of them appear in the middle of the lines. A few points in the poem may need some explanation. No one has adequately explained the “two small hills” where love holds the speaker prisoner in stanza 3 (l. 17). Foster and Boyde (2. 267) suggest that the reference is autobiographical but offer no details. Perhaps the hills suggest the lady’s breasts, although such a reference would be uncharacteristic of Dante. He would be more likely to see himself as prisoner of her eyes, but it seems a stretch to call eyes “small hills.” The virtuous stone of stanza 4 (l. 19) is a gem, thought to have magical powers due to the influence of the stars. The meadow enclosed by hills in stanza 5 suggests the topos of the enclosed garden common in medieval love poetry, in particular the Romance of the Rose.

79. AMOR, TU VEDI BEN CHE QUESTA DONNA (“LOVE, YOU SEE WELL THAT THIS LADY”) Synopsis This poem—influenced by the sestina but turned into a complex canzone—is essentially a technical tour de force in which the actual sense of the lines is secondary. To summarize, the speaker addresses love in the first stanza, commenting on how his lady ignores love’s power, though love is able to rule every other woman. When this lady saw in his face that she was the speaker’s only love, she immediately became cruel, with the cold heart of a beast. Whether the season is warm or cold, she appears to him only as a woman carved out of stone. The speaker tells love that he is steadfast as stone in serving love for the sake of this lady, though he hides the wound made when love struck

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him, as if he were an annoyance—struck him to the heart. No precious gem has ever been found whose virtue could help him against the stone lady or prevent her from leading him to death. In the third stanza the speaker says that in the cold north water becomes ice as hard as stone, and the air itself forms into cold substances. Thus the frozen water itself becomes mistress of that cold region. In the same way the cold face of his lady freezes his blood and his very thoughts, which escape as tears through the same eyes that let in the image of the cruel lady. The lady draws all beauty to her, and thus all cold cruelty runs into her heart, shunning the light of love. Her beauty so strikes his sight that he sees only her wherever he turns his eyes and cares for no other woman. He only wishes that she were a more merciful lady to him, for he spends day and night asking only to serve her in any place and time. In the fifth stanza the speaker prays to love, as a power that existed before time, motion, or even light, to have pity on him, enter into the lady’s heart, and drive from it the cold that keeps him from her, for if love comes upon the speaker in its full power while he is in his present weakened state, he will be laid in his grave, never to rise until the end of time, when he will be able to see for himself whether there ever lived another lady as beautiful as his own cruel love. In his tornada Dante addresses his song, saying that the woman in his thoughts, though stone cold to him, gives him a bold heart, and therefore he has dared to create for her something new: this song, the like of which has never been conceived before.

In each stanza the a-rhyme is repeated six times. As in the sestina the key word of the final line becomes the a-rhyme of the next stanza, so that each of the five key words (donna, tempo, luce, freddo, and petra, i.e., “woman,” “time,” “light,” “cold,” and “stone”) is the dominant rhyme in one of the five stanzas. Thus the first stanza rhymes a b a a c a a d d a e e, the second e a e e b e e c c e d d, and so on, the third stanza spotlighting the d-rhyme. At the same time the stanzas reflect the structure of a canzone, the first six lines acting as a frons and the last six as the cauda. The frons is easily divisible into two pedes, rhyming a b a and a c a. The sense of each stanza follows this structure, so that a minor shift occurs in the fourth line (as, for example, in the fifth stanza the first three lines request pity from love, while the second three ask that love enter the lady’s heart), and a major shift occurs in the seventh line (as in the fifth stanza the poet leaves off speaking of the lady and talks of how he will die if love comes upon him full force now). The tornada (rhyming a e d d c b) does not repeat the pattern of the cauda, as in most of Dante’s canzoni, but rather repeats each of the five key words in its six lines—twice repeating the d-rhyme word, freddo (cold) in a central couplet, just as freddo was the key word of the third and central stanza of the poem. As in the previous two poems the lady’s coldness here receives the central focus.

Commentary Although his claim in the tornada of this poem, that no one has conceived such a poem before, is somewhat excessive, and although he himself admits the poem’s artificiality in De vulgari eloquentia 2.13.13, the technical virtuosity of this poem is unquestionably rather remarkable. It is similar to a sestina in its use of the same words as rhyme words, here as rime equivoche, since the words are sometimes homophones rather than words with precisely the same meanings. But the stanzas here are 12 lines long and use five key words at the ends of the lines.

Synopsis This canzone remains the best known and most admired of Dante’s poems to the “Stone Lady.” He begins by declaring that he wants his words to be as harsh as the lady’s treatment of him. She becomes more cruel all the time, and she arms herself with such hard stone that, either because she is hard or because she is in constant retreat, no arrow of love is ever able to pierce her. But it is fruitless to arm himself or to retreat from her, because her darts can pierce anything and always find their target. The speaker has no defense.

80. COSÌ NEL MIO PARLAR VOGLIO ESSER ASPRO (“I WANT TO BE AS HARSH IN MY SPEECH AS THIS FAIR STONE IS IN HER BEHAVIOUR”)

Rime The second stanza begins where the first left off. The speaker is without defense, and the lady holds his mind as a stem supports a blossom. She cares as little for his suffering as a ship cares about a tranquil sea, and the burden that weighs him down is impossible to describe. He calls the lady a file that grates away his life and asks why she does not refrain from gnawing at his heart as he refrains from revealing the stone lady’s name. Following up this idea of secrecy, the speaker says that whenever he sees her among people, his heart trembles with fear that his secret will be discovered. He fears this more than he fears the death to which the teeth of love, gnawing at his senses, will probably cause. Love has struck him down and stands over him with the sword that killed DIDO, and though he pleads for mercy, he finds none. In stanza 4 the speaker continues his battle with love, who keeps raising his arm to threaten the speaker’s life while the speaker lies pinned on his back, too weak to move. Fearful shrieks rise to his mind while all his blood flees back to his heart and he is left white. Then love strikes him under his left arm, wounding him in the heart, and the speaker says that if love lifts his hand to strike again, his merciful death will occur before the blow ever descends. The speaker wishes that he could see love strike the heart of the lady who tears his own heart to pieces. Then the death to which she is driving him would seem less black to him. The lady, whom he calls a merciless, murderous, thieving foe, strikes him both in sunlight and in shade. Why does she not howl for him, as he does for her, in the fiery pit? If she did, he would instantly move to help her, and as he put her hand in her golden curls she would begin to love him. In stanza 6 the speaker continues his fantasy of holding the lady’s tresses, those locks that for him have become scourges. Taking hold of them at terce he would grasp them through vespers and into the night. He would not be kind but like a bear at play. Though love lashes him with those curls now, he would take revenge a thousandfold. He would look deep into her eyes, whose sparks have burned his heart, and thereby take vengeance for

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her earlier flight from him—until finally he would make his peace through love. In his tornada Dante tells his song to go directly to the lady who has so wounded him by robbing him of what he most hungers for, and to strike her through the heart with love’s arrow. This, he says, is the most honorable revenge. Commentary As he had to a limited extent in the earlier sonnet Com più vi fere Amor co’ suoi vincastri (number 7), Dante here makes extensive use of the rime aspre (or harsh rhymes), so that, as he says in the canzone’s opening lines, the sound of his words reflects the agonizing nature of the pain his lady’s hardness of heart causes him. As with the other poems of the “rime petrose,” the style of this song is influenced by the difficult style or trobar clus characteristic of the troubadour Arnaut Daniel (Arnaud), who also experimented with harsh rhymes. Dante lists sounds that he considers harsh in De vulgari eloquentia 2.7, a list that would include the consonant combinations in rhyme words like aspro and diaspro (ll. 1 and 5), or the double consonants of spezzi and prezzi (ll. 14 and 18). The rhyme scheme for the six stanzas is a b b c a b b c c d d e e, where the first eight lines form the frons, divided into two four-line pedes, and the stanza concludes with a relatively brief five-line cauda. Lines 3, 7, and 11 are shorter, seven-syllable lines. The concluding tornada, as is common, follows the rhyme scheme of the cauda. Nearly as remarkable as the style of this poem is the overall coherence of the six stanzas. Each stanza begins by continuing, or playing upon, the ending of the previous stanza. This technique contrasts with Dante’s more typical lyric technique of looking at an idea from a number of perspectives. The sustained analogy of love to a battle also provides unity for the poem, as the song begins with the lover’s assault on the lady, which is rebuffed by love, who pins him down and threatens his life. This is followed by the speaker’s imagined assault on the lady, whose golden locks he holds until she yields to him. The allusion to Dido in line 36 of the canzone may need some explanation. The queen of Carthage, Dido was well known in Dante’s time as the

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lover of Aeneas, and her story is told in Book 4 of Virgil’s AENEID. In Virgil’s epic Aeneas deserts her and sails for Italy, after which Dido falls upon a sword while lying on her own funeral pyre. Dante ultimately places her with the souls of the lustful in Canto 2 of the Inferno. If love here threatens the speaker with the sword of Dido, the suggestion may be that he may end his own life, but probably the sword may simply represent the unrequited love that caused Dido’s death.

81. TRE DONNE INTORNO AL COR MI SON VENUTE (“THREE WOMEN HAVE COME ROUND MY HEART”) Synopsis One of the most admired of all Dante’s canzoni, this poem begins as if it were a conventional love poem but soon takes its form as a political allegory. In the first stanza three ladies sit outside the speaker’s heart, though they cannot enter because love already reigns there. The ladies are so beautiful and dignified that love himself struggles to speak with them. The ladies are dismayed and filled with grief, like those who have been driven from their home despite their beauty and nobility. Once beloved, they are now forgotten or despised and have gone to the house of love as to the dwelling of a friend. In stanza 2 one of the ladies begins to speak, resting her head on her hand while her other hand hides her weeping eyes. She is so poorly dressed that only her own bearing shows her to be a noble lady, and Love can see her nakedness through her threadbare garment. She addresses Love, calling him “food of the few,” and reveals herself to be Justice, sister to Love’s own mother. In grief and shame Love asks who the other ladies are, and the spokeswoman, spurred to more weeping by his question, asks whether he has any pity for her eyes. She then explains that at the source of the Nile River there by the virgin wave she gave birth to the weeping, golden-haired lady at her side. Gazing at her own image in the stream, this daughter in turn gave birth to the third weeping lady. In the fourth stanza Love sighs, and with tearfilled eyes he grasps his two arrows, saying that these are weapons he means to use, though they are at present tarnished from lack of use. Gener-

osity and Temperance and others kin to Justice and Love now wander as beggars, he says, and though this is a calamity, those who weep should be humankind themselves, who suffer for it. They suffer, Love says, for they are under the influence of a malignant star. Love and Justice are eternal, and under no such influence. A generation shall arise, he says, that will polish his tarnished arrows. In the final stanza of the canzone Dante speaks out in his own voice. Listening to such noble exiles as these ladies, he says, he counts his own exile as something to be proud of. For if it is true that evil fate and judgment have indeed joined to turn white flowers black, it is still more honorable to fall along with the good. If he were not deprived of the sight he most loves (a fact that burns within him), he would consider his burden light. But the inner fire of his longing has so consumed him, flesh and bone, that Death now holds the key to his heart. Even if he were himself somewhat to blame, Dante says, it is many months since that blame was cancelled by his true repentance. This canzone has two tornadas. In the first Dante tells his song to keep itself hidden in its garment and deny its fruit to those who crave it—unless it finds a true lover of virtue. In that case it can put on new colors and show itself to him and make its beautiful flower desired in loving hearts. In the second tornada Dante tells the song to go hawking with white-feathered birds and hunting with the black hounds from whom he was forced to flee. Those blacks, he says, could pardon him but have not done so, because they do not recognize who he is. A wise man will not lock the door of forgiveness, he says, adding that forgiveness is a worthy victory in warfare. Commentary Clearly one of Dante’s later lyrics, this canzone was certainly written after his exile from Florence. Most scholars date it circa 1304. It seems likely that it was written after the White exiles’ unsuccessful attempt to return to Florence by force in 1304, after which Dante forswore his fellow exiles’ company and became what he called a “party of one.” This poem is probably part of his endeavors to try to find some means of reconciliation with the Blacks that might allow him to return to Florence.

Rime He even goes so far as to admit in stanza 5 (l. 88) that he may have been partly to blame for his exile but declares that he has repented of it long since. Still the theme of the poem is the abandonment of Justice, and Dante makes it clear that he does not consider his exile in any way just. Thus in stanza 5 (ll. 77–80) he declares that even if injustice and evil fate rule the world, he considers it more honorable to fall on the side of right. Identifying with the exiled women of the poem who embody justice itself, Dante sees his exile as honorable. But it is still painful. The beautiful sight he is prevented from seeing in stanza 5 (l. 81) is his beloved Florence, from which he is forever barred. This canzone was no doubt earmarked by Dante to provide the opening to Book 14 of the Convivio, which Dante announces in the text of that work will be concerned with the virtue of justice (1.12.12). Thus Justice is the main character of the poem, along with Love, here representing not the erotic love of the poets but rather caritas, the spiritual love that binds the universe in harmony. Human beings, subject to the influences of the stars and their own free will, may choose to depart from that harmony, and this is what has driven Justice from her exalted position. A relationship between caritas and Justice may seem logical in any case, but Dante is following the tradition of classical mythology, where Love’s mother is Venus, the daughter of Zeus, and Justice is identified as Astraea, daughter of Zeus and Themis and hence Venus’s sister. Celebrated in Virgil’s FOURTH ECLOGUE, Astraea is in Ovid the last of the gods to leave the earth after the onset of the violent iron age (Metamorphoses 1.149–150). When Justice says she was born at the source of the Nile, Dante is using the medieval tradition that the Nile was one of the four rivers of the terrestrial Paradise. Justice and her offspring were born in the river’s “virgin spring” in the Garden of Eden before the fall, when human nature was uncorrupted. The allegorical identification of the three ladies is generally accepted to be as follows: The first lady is Justice herself, that is, divine and natural law as ordained by God. From this ideal arises what scholars called jus gentium, the law of nations or basic human justice, derived by human reason from the natural law. Finally, from the jus gentium is derived

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the lex or positive law—written enacted laws that govern specific peoples. Justice in all its senses is exiled in Dante’s poem. Love’s two arrows are traditionally associated with love and hate—the onset and the extinguishing of love (cf. Metamorphoses 1.468–471), though such an interpretation makes little sense here. Foster and Boyde accept the suggestion that the two arrows represent the love of good and the hatred of evil (2. 288). Since the weapons here are tarnished from disuse, the point seems to be that few people in this age love the good and shun evil. This state does not affect the immortals themselves, however, and love leaves the world of humans to weep over their condition. But he does seem to foresee a time when those virtues will return, and the arrows will shine again (l. 72). It seems Dante, too, looked forward to that time, a time when justice would return and he would be welcomed back to Florence. His final tornada clearly refers to the White and Black parties in the birds and the hounds and prays that those black hounds will forgive his faults and recognize his true worth. The long, 18-line stanzas of this canzone rhyme a b b c a b b c c d d e e f e f g g. Lines 3, 4, 7, and 8 (the b-rhyme lines), as well as lines 11 and 13, contain seven syllables rather than the dominant 11. The eight-line frons thus divides into two pedes rhyming a b b c, followed by a 10-line cauda. The first tornada is 10 lines long, following the pattern of the cauda.

82. SE VEDI LI OCCHI MIEI DI PIANGER VAGHI (“LORD, IF YOU SEE MY EYES DESIRING TO WEEP”) Synopsis In this sonnet the speaker addresses God himself, asking whether God sees his eyes about to weep because of some new sorrow that strikes his heart and praying that God stop the tears for the sake of the one who is never out of God’s sight. The speaker calls on God to repay with his mighty hand the one who slays Justice and then seeks sanctuary with the Tyrant, from whom he sucks a poison that will soon flood the whole world. The sestet continues the sentence begun in the octave—repay, the speaker says, the one who has

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so frozen in terror the hearts of God’s servants that they cannot speak. The speaker calls on the fire of love, the light of Heaven, to raise up the virtue lying naked and cold and clothe her in his veil. If that virtue dies, he says, there can be no peace on earth. Commentary This sonnet, another political poem, has some affinities with the previous canzone (number 81) in that the virtue lying naked and cold is almost clearly Justice, in a predicament similar to the one she endured in that earlier poem. Some outrageous act of injustice has occurred to which Dante here responds, and since the last lines of the sonnet suggest it affects the entire world, that injustice is likely to be more universal than Dante’s exile from Florence. Scholars are generally agreed that the sonnet was written after 1305 (and probably before 1314) and suggest that the one who slays Justice is in fact POPE CLEMENT V, and the tyrant with whom he seeks shelter is the king PHILIP IV THE FAIR of France. The poison that will envenom the world may be the unhealthy subservience that the pope displayed to Philip, evidenced by his move of the papal see to Avignon—a move that conceivably could be the great act of injustice to which the poem alludes. Or that act may be the pope’s betrayal of the Holy Roman Emperor HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG, whom he first supported and then opposed in his attempts to pacify Italy. In that case the sonnet must have been written in 1311 or 1312, making it perhaps the latest of Dante’s Italian lyrics. The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d c d c d. The octave describes the prostrate Justice and the confederacy of the murderer and the tyrant, while the sestet calls on God to lift up Justice and restore her. One unusual aspect of the structure is the enjambment between lines 8 and 9, which makes the entire sonnet a single unbroken sentence.

83. DOGLIA MI RECA NE LO CORE ARDIRE (“GRIEF BRINGS BOLDNESS TO MY HEART”) Synopsis In one of his longest and most complex canzoni Dante here deals chiefly with the vice of greed. In his first stanza he says he is moved by grief to be bold in the

service of truth. He addresses “ladies” and tells them that they should not wonder that he speaks badly about most of humanity but should rather recognize how base their own desires are. The beauty that they possess was originally created by love for Virtue, but they are sinning against that original intent. If the ladies’ beauty was to be love’s reward for the Virtue granted to men, then the ladies should love no more, because Virtue can no more be found. He says that it would be a worthy act of disdain if a woman were to eschew her own beauty. Men, Dante says, have cut themselves off from Virtue. But Dante amends this statement, asserting that this has not been done by men but by wild beasts in the likeness of men. How strange it is for one to choose to change from master to servant, or from life to death. Virtue is a devoted disciple to her maker, obeying and honoring him in all things, so that love has placed her in the highest rank of his heavenly court. There with joy Virtue issues forth from the blessed gates, joins her blessed Lady, performs services for her Lord coming and going, and wherever she goes sustains, enhances, and augments all she finds. She scorns death. Addressing Virtue directly in an apostrophe, Dante calls her a pure handmaid, as measured by Heaven, who is solely capable of conferring lordship, and thus one possession that will endure forever. In stanza 3 Dante says that the one without Virtue becomes the slave of a slave rather than a lord. Consider, he says, the price that abandoning Virtue exacts. The lord one serves is so base that the eyes that light his mind become blind, and he is forced to follow after his base lord, who sees only folly. But, Dante says, since he wants his discourse to be of use to the ladies he addresses, he will speak more simply and move from the general to the particular, for words cloaked in veils, he says, seldom reach the intellect. In exchange for his concession the ladies—for their own good—are advised to scorn all men, for if they keep company with the men they will become as bad as the men are. A man bereft of Virtue is like a slave following his master blindly, like a miser who follows after wealth, the lord of all. The miser runs after riches (assuming that in them is satisfaction), but true peace runs faster and pulls farther and far-

Rime ther away. Such a mind is blind, because it fails to see that the more that he continually strives for keeps increasing to infinity. When the final equalizer arrives, and asks an accounting from the miser, he must answer that he has accomplished nothing. Addressing the miser directly, perhaps in the voice that Death will use, Dante curses the cradle in which the miser hatched such vain dreams, curses the bread he ate that would have been better given to dogs. Early and late the miser has spent his time piling up a hoard with both hands, but one that quickly slips from his grasp. As these men gather wealth immoderately, so they hoard it immoderately, and this enslaves them. It requires a great struggle not to become such a slave. Dante calls on Death and FORTUNE to redistribute these hoarded riches. Whom they should go to, though, Dante does not know, for these vices seem to be governed by the malignant influence of the stars. It is the responsibility of Reason to correct this behavior. But Wisdom claims to be held captive. Dante finds this excuse unacceptable. Reason is master of the soul. For a master to be overcome by a slave is shameful. Dante concludes stanza 5 by directing the beasts that greedy men have become to look at virtuous men who have fled vice and are not wandering naked over hills and swampland, while the vile bodies of the avaricious are richly clothed. Virtue, who tries to make peace with all her enemies, goes to the miser with a bright lure (as one may use to call a hawk). But the miser keeps avoiding the lure, even when Virtue has walked around him, calling to him. She throws the lure toward him but still he does not fly to it, until Virtue has gone, and then when he does take it, he is disturbed because he believes he will have to pay for the trinket. There are some, Dante says, who through delay, or through smug countenances, or through sullen looks, turn gifts that they give into costly items for the recipients, who pay highly for such rewards. That manner of giving wounds the receiver of the gift in such a way that a subsequent refusal of any other gift will seem sweet to him by comparison. This is the pain a miser causes himself and others. In stanza 7 Dante addresses the ladies again, saying that he has revealed in part the wickedness of those men who admire them in order to incite

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them against these men, but he says there is much more that he has not said, for each one of these men is filled with a variety of vices. Thus love today is in a state of confusion: Since like is attracted to like, a good root needs another good to draw out its goodness in the form of love. The evil men cannot draw real love from the ladies, but only some perversion of it. Thus Dante concludes that a woman who counts beauty as a good thing should not hope to be loved by base men. If, on the other hand, she thinks the love of such beings appropriate, then she must redefine love as bestial lust. Such a woman deserves death, who so severs her beauty from its natural goodness and believes that love is something beyond the jurisdiction of Reason. In the tornada Dante tells his song to go to the beautiful, wise, and courteous lady Bianca Giovanna Contessa, who is of his own country and lives close by. The song is to first make itself and its purpose plain to her and then travel on to wherever she will send it. Commentary The 21-line stanzas of this canzone are the longest Dante ever employed. They rhyme a b b c d a c c d b d e e f f g h h h g g. Thus the frons is made up of the first 10 lines and comprises two five-line pedes, where, unusually, the second ped inverts the rhymes of the first. The cauda is thus made up of the last 11 lines and includes a triplet (ll. 17–19), also unusual in Dante’s canzoni. There are nine heptasyllabic (or seven-syllable) lines, also an unusually high number: lines 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 13, 18, and 19. This technical virtuosity adorns a serious poem concerned with ethical values. In De vulgari eloquentia (2.2.8) Dante alludes to this poem as evidence of his claim to be Italy’s premier moral poet—thus the poem must predate that text. Most scholars date it between 1302 and 1305, thus after Dante’s exile. It seems clear that this canzone was intended to be the introductory poem to the final book of the Convivio, since in that text Dante indicates that his last book will be concerned with the virtue of liberality (1.8.18). This poem would introduce the concept by exploring the disastrous effects of its opposite: avarice. As the Comedy itself does, this poem focuses on human responsibility. Although in lines 94–95

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Dante seems to suggest that malignant influences of the stars entice men to evil deeds, he quickly emphasizes that human beings should be governed by their own reason, and reason should not allow the will to make evil or foolish choices. Thus Reason’s complaint that it is trapped or overcome is inexcusable in Dante’s view (ll. 95–99). As in the central canto of the Purgatorio (17), where Virgil explains that all human actions are governed by love, and that sin is a matter of love misdirected or perverted, here the miser is trapped by his love of riches, making the mistake of believing that he will find peace if he accumulates wealth. Reason should recognize that only in love of the Highest Good is true peace, but here Reason has been abandoned and the sinners pursue the lesser good of worldly wealth, which will ultimately slip from their grasp (ll. 83–84). The fact that the misers, or sinful men in general, are consistently portrayed as beasts is fitting, in that, on the Neoplatonic scale of being Dante alludes to so often, free will governed by reason is what most characterizes humanity. In subjecting reason to will one becomes like a beast, and not a man. The poem’s tornada has inspired some commentary. There was indeed a contemporary countess named Bianca Giovanna, who was the daughter of the count Guido Novello di Poppi. Her brother was Federigo Novello, whom Dante encounters in Canto 6 of the Purgatorio, among the souls who died violent deaths but were able to repent before the end. However, most scholars interpret the name as symbolic: The lady’s name combines Bianca (that is, “whiteness” and “purity”), Giovanna (from the Hebrew meaning grace), and Contessa (meaning fair or beautiful). The lady of the tornada, then, would combine purity, grace, and beauty and thus embody the ideal lady, the one who would withhold her love from any of these vicious men described in the poem.

84. I’HO VEDUTO GIÀ SENZA RADICE (“I HAVE SEEN A ROOTLESS TREE”) Synopsis This sonnet is a response to one addressed to Dante by the poet Cino da Pistoia. In Cino’s sonnet he had revealed that he was enamored with a new

lady. Although matters appear to be promising with this lady, Cino hesitates, knowing from experience (with an earlier lady whom he refers to in his poetry as the “dark lady”) that love can be deceptive. He asks Dante for advice: Love is pushing him forward, but fear is holding him back. In Dante’s reply he compares the new lady to a tree without roots. He has seen such a tree, he says, that still had enough sap that the one whose son fell into the river Po (i.e., the Sun, whose son, Phaeton, made such a fall) could still draw green leaves from the tree. But the tree could give no fruit, for nature would not allow such unnatural engendering, knowing that the fruit would taste false unless it had been nourished by its true nurse (i.e., the earth). The new, or “green,” lady as Dante calls her, is in her greenness (perhaps her youth) like this tree. She has struck Cino’s heart through his eyes and seems intent on staying there. One should beware of any such green-garbed ladies, Dante says, and therefore warns Cino to give up his hunt for this one. Commentary This sonnet, and the four subsequent ones, were written as part of an exchange with Dante’s friend the jurist and poet Cino da Pistoia. Dante praises Cino, his younger contemporary, in De vulgari eloquentia as the premier love poet in Italy (at the same time naming himself as the chief Italian moral poet). Indeed he admired Cino’s work so much that he refers to himself as “Cino’s friend” five times in De vulgari eloquentia. Scholars are uncertain as to whether this poem was written before or after Dante’s exile, though since most of the other sonnets exchanged with Cino are definitely post exile, it seems a good guess that this one is as well. In this particular sonnet Dante is clearly warning Cino off from his new infatuation. If the lady is like the tree, she has no roots, no faithfulness, and any relationship with her can bear no real fruit. The green color suggests youth, inexperience, a lack of steadfastness. Its use here recalls Chaucer’s use of the color in his lyric “Against Women Unconstant,” in the refrain of which he tells the unfaithful woman that instead of blue, the color of constancy, she should wear green—there, as in Dante’s poem, the color of infidelity.

Rime The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d d d c c, with the octave introducing the image of the tree and the sestet applying it to the lady. The unusual pattern of the sestet allows for a concluding couplet, giving the sonnet an unusually strong sense of closure. The pattern, however, was not of Dante’s making: As was usual in such poetic exchanges Dante would be expected to incorporate some of Cino’s rhymes into his own poem. Here, however, Dante imitates Cino’s rhyme scheme exactly, line for line, as Cino does, using -ice as his a-rhyme, -ardo as his b-rhyme, -erde as his c-rhyme, and -ita as his d-rhyme.

85. PERCH’IO NON TROVO CHI MECO RAGIONI (“SINCE I FIND NO ONE HERE WITH WHOM TO SPEAK”) Synopsis In this sonnet Dante began another exchange with Cino. He first tells his friend that there is no one where he is staying at this time with whom Dante can talk about love, and so he feels the urge to express these thoughts in verse. He excuses himself for not writing sooner by complaining about his location, which he says is so wicked that goodness can find no lodging. Dante can find no woman in the place worthy of love, and no man to sigh over a lady. Any man who did would be thought a fool by the rest of the population. He addresses “Messer Cino” (the proper address for a jurist) and laments how bad times have become for them and their verse, since goodness is now so unwelcome. Commentary This poem seems clearly to have been written after Dante’s exile—and after Cino’s as well, since Dante uses the pronoun we in speaking of their common lot (Cino was exiled from Pistoia between 1303 and 1306). Wherever Dante is writing from, he implies that the people are unsophisticated and even boorish. Since, as Guido Guinizelli had said, love makes its dwelling place in the “gentle heart,” the lack of interest here suggests a lack of gentility, of true nobility, in the citizens with whom Dante has come into contact. The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d c d c, with the octave presenting Dante’s lament in general,

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and the sestet dealing with the people’s boorish lack of any sense of the ennobling effects of love. In his reply to Dante Cino agrees that goodness seems to have no dwelling anywhere but asserts that one has a duty to affirm goodness, just as Christ did, even in the face of such evil and changed circumstances. He begs Dante, in the name of the lady whom he loves, not to be silent. His sonnet repeats Dante’s technical feat in his earlier reply to Cino: duplicating Dante’s rhyme scheme line for line.

86. IO SONO STATO CON AMORE INSIEME (“I HAVE BEEN TOGETHER WITH LOVE”) Synopsis This sonnet responds to one of Cino’s in which the younger poet was essentially asking Dante a fairly typical question debated by medieval lovers and poets: whether it was acceptable, if one despairs of ever winning one’s lady, to move on to love another. Love has entered once more into the windows of his eyes, and he asks Dante’s advice on the matter, he says, before he is killed by the black and white (a description perhaps of the new lady’s eyes, but also an unmistakable allusion to the Black and White parties, whose rivalry has sent both Cino and Dante into exile). Dante’s poem, the best known of those exchanged with Cino, begins by declaring that he has been familiar with the ways of love since he was nine years old and that hence he knows very well the way love may curb you at one point and spur you on at another, the way it can cause both sorrow and joy. To attempt to use reason or virtue to fight the urgings of love is like trying to calm a raging storm by calling out to the thundering clouds. Since where love’s power reigns, free will has no force, it is useless to give advice in a situation such as Cino describes. Yes, Dante agrees, love can certainly make one love again—use new spurs to drive you on—and therefore we must follow to whatever new place he drives us, if our old love has weakened. Commentary This poem was included with Dante’s third Latin epistle, addressed to Cino, in which Dante gives a

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more learned, Scholastic argument supporting the theme of his sonnet, citing Ovid as an authority. This makes this sonnet interesting for Dante’s biography, since it seems to establish the time of this exchange with Cino as circa 1303–06 (the epistle alluding to Cino’s exile). The nine years of age that Dante refers to in his sonnet’s first line is the point at which, in the Vita nuova, he says he met Beatrice. For Dante this marks the beginning of his experience of love. His suggestion about the impossibility of free will’s resisting love seems to contradict his own moral philosophy that reason must guide the will to love wisely—a precept important for the canzone Doglia mi reca ne lo core ardire (number 83) just considered. But that poem was probably later than this one, and besides, Dante probably realized that Cino’s mind was already made up and, as he says in lines 10–11, there is little chance that advice will have any effect where love is concerned. The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d c d c d, with the octave exploring Dante’s personal experience of love, and the sestet applying generalizations about love’s power to Cino’s case. Once again Dante duplicates the rhymes used in Cino’s sonnet but gives a new twist to the imitation, switching Cino’s a-rhyme and b-rhymes in the octave.

87. DEGNO FA VOI TROVARE OGNI TESORO (“YOUR SWEET AND CLEAR VOICE MAKES YOU WORTHY”) Synopsis Cino had written a sonnet addressed to the Black Guelph captain, the marquis MOROELLO MALASPINA, a friend of both Cino’s and Dante’s, in which Cino is complaining of a new love. He had sought a mine of gold, he says, when an evil thorn pricked his heart (there is a pun on Moroello’s name—which means “bad thorn”—in the allusion to Cino’s new mistress). He now feels he is dying, but his tears are shed because he has not found the gold of true love, rather than because his life is ending, ruled as it is by an evil star. He would say more, he says, but for the fact that his reader might find amusement in his pain. He hopes that before he dies the lord (by which he seems to refer to both love and God himself) will turn the hard mountain that is the

unmoved new mistress into gold, just as he once drawn water from a marble stone for Moses. It seems likely that this sonnet was sent to Moroello in his court at Lunigiana sometime in 1306 or 1307, when Dante was a guest at the court. His noble patron seems to have entrusted Dante with certain duties in his court, including correspondence, and therefore it was Dante who wrote a reply to Cino on behalf of the marquis. Dante’s answering sonnet begins by praising Cino’s sweet poetic style, which makes him worthy of any treasure. But he then goes on to chide his friend, saying that Cino’s own fickle heart, which the thorn of love has never truly pricked, leads him away from it. Dante himself has received countless wounds from love’s thorns, and their only cure is his sighs. But, Dante says, he has found the true gold ore, whose refined purity makes him grow pale. If through blindness one is unable to see the sun, it is not the fault of the sun but of the base condition of those eyes. Dante says that if he saw rain pouring from Cino’s eyes to support his claim to be in love, it still would not allay Dante’s doubts about Cino’s claim. Commentary The tone of Dante’s reply to Cino is all-important to this poem. Clearly Dante admires Cino’s poetic skill and ability to compose love poetry in the sweetest style but has doubts about Cino’s sincerity. He sees Cino’s perpetual complaints about a new love as evidence that Cino has never really loved truly, in contrast with Dante’s steadfast devotion to Beatrice and her memory. The gold for which Cino is looking can only be uncovered through constancy like Dante’s. On a personal level the tone of the sonnet is probably gently chiding in a humorous way, as if Dante is amused by Cino for crying wolf too often. The imagery of the sonnet is not difficult to follow: To call true love a treasure or a gold mine is fairly common and repeats the initial image of Cino’s sonnet. The metaphor of lines 9–11 is striking: The sun cannot be seen by blind eyes, but that is the fault of the eyes, not the sun. Love, a bright treasure like the sun, should not be reproached by Cino simply because he cannot achieve it. It may

Rime be that he, as the blind man, is incapable of seeing and appreciating love. The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d d d c c (the same pattern as number 84). Once again Dante reproduces the rhymes of Cino’s poem line for line. Dante’s octave compares Cino’s fickleness to Dante’s constancy, while the sestet compares Cino to the blind man and reinforces Dante’s doubt.

88. IO MI CREDEA DEL TUTTO ESSER PARTITO (“I THOUGHT, MESSER CINO, THAT I HAD QUITE ABANDONED”) Synopsis Dante’s last sonnet exchange with Cino was initiated with this sonnet. Dante, in a tone similar to that of number 87, once more chides Cino for his fickleness. As the poem begins, Dante says that he had believed he was through with writing love lyrics, since his ship is set on another course. But since he has heard that Cino is still being caught on every hook, he has decided to take up his pen again briefly with his tired hand. Someone like Cino, who becomes infatuated now here, now there, and both binds himself and loosens himself regularly, shows by his actions that love does not wound him deeply. If Cino’s fickle heart can turn him so easily from one love to another, Dante urges him to correct that heart with virtue, so that Cino’s deeds might correspond with the sweet words of his poetry. Commentary Dante implies in this sonnet that he is tired and has developed his poetry beyond love lyrics and sonnet exchanges. When he says that his ship is set on another course, he refers either to his beginning the composition of the Comedy, or to his new focus on philosophy that was culminating in his work on the Convivio. Clearly this is one of Dante’s latest sonnets, though since Cino’s reply suggests that he, too, was still in exile when he wrote it, Dante’s poem cannot be later than 1306 (the time that Cino’s party of Blacks regained control of Pistoia). The sonnet rhymes a b b a a b b a c d e d c e, with the octave contrasting Dante’s maturity to Cino’s fickleness, which gives Dante his motive for writing. The sestet focuses on Cino’s faults, urging him

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to correct them through the virtue of constancy. Cino’s reply once again reproduces Dante’s precise rhymes and rhyme scheme. In it Cino excuses himself in a clever way: He has been grieving, he says, since exile has separated him from the exquisite beauty of his lady. When he sees in any other woman some resemblance to his beloved, he is immediately infatuated with her. He has never left off loving his lady, he says, though despair could easily have excused him for doing so. It is always just one beauty that drives him, and when some form of that beauty appears in many different women, he must necessarily be attracted to them as well.

89. AMOR, DA CHE CONVIEN PUR CH’IO MI DOGLIA (“LOVE, SINCE AFTER ALL I AM FORCED TO GRIEVE”) Synopsis This is probably the last of Dante’s poems concerned with earthly love, and the last written of his canzoni. In the first stanza the speaker appeals to love, saying that he feels compelled to express his sorrow. Love wishes him dead, but he must let the world know of his feelings so that it may excuse his death. He asks for love to give him the words to express his pain but requests that his lady not hear these words before he dies, since if pity were to show on her face, she would be less fair, lacking the beauty of her smile. In the second stanza the speaker begins his description of the manner in which he was overcome by love. The lady’s image is lodged in his soul, where his fantasy calls that image to mind and so contributes to his own doom. The image of the lady’s eyes kindles in his soul such desire that the soul falls to self-accusation, knowing it has lit the very fire in which it now burns. No argument from reason has any power against the storm that rages inside him. His pain causes sighs to issue from his mouth and tears from his eyes. In stanza 3 the exultant and pitiless image of the lady dominates the speaker’s will and forces him to go to where the desired lady can be found—since like is attracted to like, the image of the lady seeks out the lady herself. He compares his approaching the lady to snow moving toward the sun but

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says he is helpless and moves like one compelled by others to walk to his own execution. As he approaches her, he seems to hear a voice say, “He will be dead in just a moment,” but just as he turns in search of mercy, he meets the lady’s eyes, which destroy him. In stanza 4 the speaker slowly recovers from the blow he received from the lady’s eyes. He does not know what happened to his soul after being stricken by the lady—only love, who stayed to watch him as he lay lifeless, knows. In time his soul returns to his body, but only ignorance and oblivion have kept it company while it was gone. As the speaker rises slowly to his feet and gazes at the wound that the lady inflicted, he can find no comfort and trembles with fear. His face loses all color, just as it did when the thunderbolt produced by the lady’s smile laid him low. His face remains darkened and he cannot lift his spirits. In the fifth stanza the speaker addresses love, saying that it is love that has led him to this state among the mountains in the valley of the ARNO River, along whose banks love has always held sway over him. Here love drives him alive or dead, through the power of the thunderbolt in the lady’s smile. In this place the speaker can find no lady or wise man to complain to of his plight. But if the lady he loves does not care about him, he cannot expect help from others. This lady, he says, love has exiled from his court and pays no attention to love’s arrows, since her haughtiness has protected her heart as heavy armor, which nothing can pierce. In the tornada Dante calls his canzone a “mountain song” and sends it out. Perhaps, he says, it will be read in Florence, his own country that has banished him, empty of love or pity. If the song does go to his home city, it should say that its maker no longer has the power to trouble Florence, since he is so bound by love that even if the city were to open its gates to him, he would lack the power to return. Commentary This poem was written some time during 1307 or 1308 and was sent to the marquis Moroello Malaspina, accompanied by Dante’s fourth Latin epistle (number 4), in which Dante says he saw a woman

on the upper Arno—no doubt in the Casentino, where he had gone upon leaving Malaspina’s court. The woman caused him to abandon his study of philosophy and to break his resolve to avoid women. Love, he says, now holds him captive and has impeded his free will. In some ways the canzone hearkens back to Dante’s earlier love poetry in the mode of Cavalcanti. Love is seen here as a destructive force, capable of annihilating the speaker’s soul. As Scott points out (96), the inability of reason to govern the tempest of emotions in the speaker’s soul recalls lines 5–6 of the sonnet Io sono stato con Amore insieme (poem number 86), addressed to Cino and, as is this one, included with one of his Latin epistles. The imagery of the poem—the speaker as snow melting in the sun of the lady, the speaker walking zombielike to his own execution, the speaker’s soul blasted from his body by the thunderbolt of the lady’s smile—is unusual for Dante, and the emphasis on his own inner feelings totally contrasts with the revolutionary canzone Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore that ushered in Dante’s stilnovist poetry and formed the 19th chapter of the Vita nuova some 15 years prior to the composition of this poem. It has been conjectured that Dante, who by this time may have been writing the Comedy, is exploring here the kind of disintegrating passion embodied by FRANCESCA DA RIMINI and Paolo in Canto 5 of the Inferno. The death that he describes, thus, is a moral death (Foster and Boyde 2. 335). Of particular interest in the poem, however, is the tornada, in which Dante is able to relate the cruelty of the woman he loves to the cruelty of Florence, the city that he loves. A death sentence awaits him if he returns to Florence, and in the poem he describes himself as moving toward his own execution in approaching the lady. The irony of the poem’s tornada is hard to miss. The 15-line stanzas of the poem rhyme a b c a b c c d d e c d d e e. The b-rhyme lines (2 and 5) and line 9 are heptameter or seven-syllable lines. The frons is made up of the first six lines, divided into two pedes of three lines each (a b c). The cauda is thus the last nine lines of the stanza. The tornada, as is typical, follows the rhyme scheme of the cauda.

La vita nuova

FURTHER READING Barbi, Michele, and Francesco Maggini, ed. Rime della “Vita nuova” e della Giovinezza. Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1956. Barbi, Michele, and Vincenzo Pernicone. Rime della Maturità e del’Esilio. Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1969. Barolini, Teodolinda. “Dante and the Lyric Past.” In Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 14–33. New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1993. Boyde, Patrick. Dante’s Style in His Lyric Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Cirigliano, Marc, ed. and trans. The Complete Lyric Poems of Dante Alighieri. Studies in Italian Literature, vol. 3. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997. Contini, Gianfranco, ed. Rime. In Dante Alighieri, Opere Minori, vol. 1, part 1, 251–552. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1984. Diehl, Patrick S., trans. Dante’s Rime. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979. Durling, Robert M., and Ronald L. Martinez. Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s Rime petrose. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Foster, K., and P. Boyde, ed. and trans. Dante’s Lyric Poetry. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. Goldin, Frederick, ed. German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973. Scott, John A. Understanding Dante. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Took, J. F. Dante: Lyric Poet and Philosopher: An Introduction to the Minor Works. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Tusiani, Joseph, trans. Dante’s Lyric Poems. 2nd ed. Introduction and notes by Giuseppe C. Di Scipio, Ottawa: Legas, 1999.

La vita nuova (New Life) (ca. 1295) Dante’s first important work, the Vita nuova, was begun in about 1292 or 1293, two years after the death of his beloved Beatrice. In the text Dante

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presents 31 lyric poems set within 41 short prose passages that present a narrative of the poet’s relationship with Beatrice from the moment he meets her when he is age nine until her death and its aftermath. The format of alternating passages of verse and prose was unusual, and Dante probably borrowed it from ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS’s sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy. But Dante’s prose has a more complex relationship with the verse than that of Boethius: The prose passages of the Vita nuova generally give a context for and a rudimentary analysis of the poems and create a somewhat fictionalized autobiography chronicling the youthful protagonist’s changing views of poetry and love, moving from an egotistical focus on his own emotions to a more objective focus on the virtues of Beatrice herself, to a final vision of Beatrice in heavenly bliss. Dante’s commentary on the poems generally amounts to a fairly basic technical analysis of the structure of each lyric. While these analyses in themselves add little to our understanding of the poems, they do complement Dante’s focus on numbers and geometrical structures evident in the Vita nuova. The number 9, for example, pervades the text (it appears 22 times), and Dante spends an entire chapter (Chapter 29) discussing the significance of the number 9 for Beatrice. Nine, of course, is the square of 3, the number of the Trinity. The overall structure of the Vita nuova takes shape around three canzoni (long love poems). There are 10 short poems before the first CANZONE and 10 short poems after the last one. The nine poems that form the middle section of the book are arranged so that four short poems precede the middle canzone, and four follow it, making the second canzone, the long poem on the death of Beatrice, the center of the book. Thus the book falls into three symmetrical parts. Further both the first and last sections fall into two distinct sections, each with a clear shift in direction after the fifth short poem. One aspect of the Vita nuova’s style that readers notice immediately is its generality. Dante provides no names for anyone in the text other than Beatrice. Other shadowy figures appear—his best friend, two “screen ladies,” a donna gentile (gentle lady) at the window, Beatrice’s brother and

350 La vita nuova her father, Dante’s own sister—none of whom is named. The city of FLORENCE is simply called “the city.” There are almost no facts included: Beatrice’s husband (SIMONE DE’ BARDI) is never mentioned, for example; nor, for that matter, is Dante’s wife (GEMMA DONATI). The apparent intent of these highly generalized descriptions is to empty the story as much as possible of anything personal or historical—to raise Dante’s personal experience to the level of universality. It reflects as well the very lesson that the lover Dante must learn as he progresses through the narrative of the Vita nuova: that his carnal love of Beatrice, focused on her physicality, must grow and develop into a spiritual love. The narrative of the book thus reflects the poet’s incorporation of that lesson. It is thus important to separate the protagonist of the Vita nuova from the more mature poet Dante who constructs the text from his early poems and experiences. First, there is no way to know how much of the narrative is fictionalized, or whether the inspiration for any individual poem was in fact what the narrator says it was. Most scholars are skeptical as to the factual content of the story and accept the book as a fictionalized autobiography. The lover in the story is clearly to be blamed for his youthful egoism and self-indulgence, which he must outgrow. He must also learn to understand the true glory and meaning of Beatrice, which he cannot do until the very end of the book. Accordingly in the following commentary I have generally referred to the Vita nuova’s protagonist as “the narrator” rather than “Dante.”

PART 1 (CHAPTERS 1–9) Synopsis Dante starts by saying that he is taking a chapter from the book of his memory, a chapter under the title “The New Life begins.” In the second chapter he describes his first meeting with Beatrice, when he and she are both nine years of age. He introduces her as one whom all people call Beatrice, the Bringer of Blessings, even if they do not know her name. She wears red, the color of love, when the narrator first sees her, and her effect on him physically makes him tremble. Following the medieval theory of psychology, Dante describes how his vital

spirits (in his heart), his animal spirits (in his brain), and his natural spirits (in his liver) all quake at his first sight of Beatrice. From this moment he says, love governed his soul, and he speaks of searching out Beatrice over the next several years. In Chapter 3 Dante describes his next important meeting with Beatrice, which occurs nine years after their first encounter, in the ninth hour of the day. This time she is wearing white, the color of purity, and the meeting is significant because Beatrice greets him for the first time. The greeting transports the narrator into ecstasy, and he seeks out the privacy of his own room, where he dreams that the god of love appears to him in a fiery cloud, holding an unconscious Beatrice naked under a loose red cloth. As Dante watches, love awakens the lady and feeds her Dante’s burning heart, after which the god begins to weep and takes Beatrice away into the heavens. This vision becomes the subject of the SONNET that stands as the first poem in the text: A ciascun’ alma presa e gentil core (“To every captive soul and loving heart”). Dante goes on to say that he sent this first sonnet to many of the famous poets of the city, and that several of them responded to him, including one (GUIDO CAVALCANTI) who encouraged him and became his best friend. After this vision the narrator begins to suffer from a lover’s malady, becoming weak and frail. When people ask him why he appears so ill, he tells them he is in the power of love, but he will not reveal the object of his affection. One day while watching Beatrice among a group of people, the narrator notices that another lady, seated between them, looks at him in the belief that he has been gazing at her rather than Beatrice. He seizes on this opportunity to use this lady as a screen, and he says that for several years he maintains this fiction, addressing trifling verses to the screen lady as part of his charade. When the screen lady is forced to leave his city in Chapter 7, the narrator composes a double sonnet (a 20-line poem in two main parts) lamenting her departure: O voi che per la via d’Amor passate (“O ye who travel on the road of Love”). A more serious departure occurs in Chapter 8, when a young lady who had been a friend of Beatrice’s dies, and the narrator, moved by his feel-

La vita nuova ing for what must be Beatrice’s grief, writes two poems lamenting this young lady’s death. The first is the sonnet Piangete, amanti, poi che piange Amore (“If Love himself weep, shall not lovers weep”). The second is another double sonnet, Morte villiana, di pieta nemica (“Villainous Death, at war with tenderness”). In Chapter 9 the narrator himself is compelled to leave the city for a short time in the company of a large group. On the journey the narrator has another vision of love. This time it is dressed as a shabby pilgrim and says he has come from the city where the narrator’s screen lady has gone. Because she is not likely to return soon, love tells the narrator to adopt a new screen lady and gives him the name of this second woman to use to camouflage his affections. As Chapter 9 ends, Dante includes a sonnet written on this occasion: Cavalcando l’altrier per un cammino (“As I rode out one day not long ago”). Commentary The importance of the number 9 in Dante’s text is clear from the beginning of the narrative: Dante meets Beatrice in their ninth year, and she greets him nine years later, at the ninth hour of the day. The association of Beatrice with the number 9 (the perfect square of the trinitarian 3) continues through the text, and Dante deals with it directly in Chapter 29. Dante took the medieval theory of the psychology of love that lies behind most of the narrator’s reactions in the Vita nuova directly from the poetry of his friend Guido Cavalcanti. According to this theory the relationships between parts of the body and the soul, or bodily senses and their objects, were governed by highly refined material substances called spirits. There were material substances naturally produced by the body in the act of digestion, and they were refined by the body’s heat to various degrees depending on what functions they were to perform. The most basic spiritus naturalis or natural spirit originated in the liver (the seat of life), the more refined spiritus vitalis or vital spirit was formed in the heart (the seat of emotion and movement), and the further refined spiritus animalis was formed in the brain (the seat of human reason).

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Dante’s meeting with Beatrice in Chapter 2 causes a tumult in all three of these, thus radically altering his psyche (see Goldin 298–311). Cavalcanti’s theory holds that spirits formed from the natural spirit are crucial for the operation of the senses, so that the eye was thought to send forth a visual spirit that struck an object and then returned to the eye with the image of that object and ultimately passed into the mind, into the memory (from the “book” of which Dante says he is drawing this story). Significant for the Vita nuova is the relationship between spirits and sighs: A sigh was thought to be the release of a vital spirit, and uttering too many sighs could weaken a lover, drain him of his needed vital spirits, and ultimately cause his death. But the spirit released in a sigh can return to the lover, perhaps carrying an image of his beloved, and so strengthen him. Thus the weakness that the narrator displays in the course of the narrative (which sometimes makes him the object of ridicule) results from the loss of his vital spirits. This concept also explains the final sonnet of the Vita nuova, in which the lover’s sigh seeks out Beatrice in Heaven and returns to the lover with her image. Many of the early poems in the text, therefore, show the strong influence of Cavalcanti. However where Cavalcanti’s poetry commonly depicts love as a destructive, irrational, and negative force, Dante from the beginning insists that his love for Beatrice was pure and “never allowed me to be ruled by love without the faithful counsel of reason” (Musa 4). Although there are clearly situations in the text that depict the lover’s actions negatively, the implication is that such occasions stemmed from his misunderstanding of the true nature of Beatrice’s love. The nature of that love is suggested by the greeting in Chapter 3. The narrator remarks upon the lady’s indescribable courtesy or nobility, for which, he says, she is now rewarded in Heaven. When she greets him for the first time he receives, at that moment, a glimpse of perfect heavenly bliss. The significance of Beatrice’s salutation for the lover is explored further in Chapter 11, after she has denied him that greeting. The vision of the god of love holding the sleeping Beatrice is memorable because of its striking

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imagery, which is much more vivid than the generalized descriptions in the narrative (and more vivid, too, than the accompanying sonnet). The words with which love greets the narrator—Ego dominus tuus (“I am your Lord”) have been compared to the words with which God greets Moses in Exodus 20.2: “I am the Lord your God” (NRSV). Perhaps the narrator is failing to recognize the full extent of this god’s power. The description here of Beatrice, naked under the loosely draped crimson cloth, clearly suggests the physical nature of the narrator’s attraction. The burning heart that love feeds to the unwilling Beatrice is the most striking aspect of both the description and the poem: The act seems to symbolize how his love of Beatrice will consume his entire life. But the image is not a pleasant one, and perhaps that is the result of the carnal nature of the narrator’s love as depicted here. Such a carnal love is bound to consume his heart. Perhaps this is why the god of love exits lamenting. The device of the screen lady is taken directly from the courtly love tradition Dante had inherited from the Provençal troubadours and their Italian imitators. One of the chief tenets of this tradition was the necessity for keeping the name of one’s lady secret. Conforming to this tradition, the narrator pretends to be in love with a woman whom he uses only to disguise the real object of his love. The first screen lady is the subject of Chapters 5 through 7. The sonnet included in Chapter 7, written specifically to make people think that he is grieving over the screen lady’s leaving Florence, is remarkable for its first few lines, which, as the narrator says, are from the book of Lamentations (1.12): “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow” (NRSV). Since this was a text commonly associated with the liturgy of Holy Week and used to refer to Christ as the “man of sorrows,” its use here in a profane love lyric, intended for a woman for whom the poet only feigned affection, is somewhat shocking. It demonstrates the narrator’s irrational concept of love. The shabbily dressed god of love whom the narrator meets as a pilgrim in Chapter 9 reflects love as conceived by the narrator. The pilgrim love rather unwisely advises the lover to adopt a new screen lady—a device that will prove disastrous. Perhaps

the impoverished state of the pilgrim love reflects the poverty of this advice. The feigned sorrow of Chapter 7 turns into a real sorrow in Chapter 8 with the death of Beatrice’s young friend. This is the first of a series of foreshadowings in the text, leading up to Beatrice’s own death in Chapter 28. The two poems included here are very conventional, influenced not by Cavalcanti but by earlier poets like the Tuscan poet GUITTONE D’AREZZO, whose rhetorical style Dante later condemned. The double sonnet included in Chapter 8—a poem of 20 lines divided into two parts of 12 and eight lines, respectively—was a form invented and utilized by Guittone. Thus the style of these poems was already obsolete by the time the Vita nuova was composed.

PART 2 (CHAPTERS 10–19) Synopsis The first major turning point in the text occurs in Chapter 10, in which the narrator tells how his behavior toward the new screen lady (as he tries to convince the rest of the city of his love for her) damages his reputation to such an extent that one day, when he meets Beatrice on the street, she refuses to greet him. This refusal causes a crisis in his soul. He spends all of Chapter 11 describing the significance of that greeting to him: It was in his lady’s greeting that all his bliss lay, and when he had received that greeting he was so inspired that all his actions were motivated by pure charity. Overcome by distress, the narrator goes home and falls asleep in his bed as if he is a child who has been spanked. He dreams of love again, this time dressed all in white, who tells the narrator that the time has come for him to give up the use of his screen ladies. Love is weeping in this dream, and when Dante asks why, he answers in Latin that he is “like the center of a circle, equidistant from all points on the circumference” (Musa 18), while the narrator is not. Though the narrator does not understand, love says he should not seek to know more than is useful to him. He then encourages the narrator to write a poem to Beatrice, and he does: a ballata or ballad declaring his long love and asking for mercy. This is the poem Ballata, i’ voi che tu ritrovi Amore (“I want you to go, ballad, to seek out Love”).

La vita nuova This poem ultimately has no effect, and in Chapter 13 the narrator describes the conflicting emotions of hope and despair that love causes him, and he writes a sonnet exploring these emotions: Tutti li miei penser parlan d’Amore (“All my thoughts speak to me concerning Love”). In Chapter 14, however, the narrator suffers another blow from Beatrice. When he is taken by a friend to a wedding feast, the narrator loses his vital spirits and nearly collapses when he realizes Beatrice is present. His behavior evokes derisive laughter from the ladies around Beatrice, and he sees her laughing with them. Rescued from the situation by his friend, Dante goes home and writes a sonnet addressed to Beatrice, explaining that his love might more appropriately be the object of pity than scorn. This is the poem Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate (“You join with other ladies to make sport”). In Chapter 15, ruminating more on these events, he writes another sonnet to Beatrice, describing the effect the sight of her has on him, and how her mockery may cause his death: Ciò che m’incontra, ne la mente more (“Whatever might restrain me when I feel drawn”). In Chapter 16 he writes another poem to his lady, Spesse fiate vegnonmi a la mente (“Time and again the thought comes to my mind”), explaining four other points about his love that he thinks he has not yet made clear. But in Chapter 17 the narrator abruptly relates his resolution to say no more about his own state and goes on in Chapter 18 to explain in detail how and why he made this decision. The narrator is in the presence of a number of ladies who are aware of his love, one of whom asks him why he loves this lady if he cannot stand the sight of her. He tells them that since she has denied him the bliss of her greeting, his happiness now exists solely in words that praise her. The lady responds that all of his poetry must be written for some other purpose, since all it does is talk about his own condition. Ashamed, the narrator vows from this point on to write only poetry that directly praises Beatrice. The narrator is not sure how to compose this kind of poetry, until when he is walking one day beside a stream it occurs to him: The poem should be addressed not to Beatrice herself but to the ladies who have spoken to him about love.

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Inspired by this insight, he composes in Chapter 19 the great canzone Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”), a poem that omits any reference to the speaker’s emotion but describes the virtues of Beatrice in a way to suggest that her perfections transcend the world and are more appropriate for Heaven itself. Commentary The narrator’s growth—both spiritually and aesthetically—truly begins in this second section. The egoism of his use of the second screen lady is brought home to him by Beatrice’s snub in Chapter 10. His discussion in Chapter 11 of the ennobling effect of his lady’s greeting is a good indication that if he focused more on Beatrice and less on his own desires, he would be more in touch with the “flame of charity” within him (Musa 16). This obsession with Beatrice’s greeting looks forward to the importance of her smile of greeting when the pilgrim Dante meets her in Canto 31 of the PURGATORIO. The weakness of the narrator’s conception of love is illustrated in his third vision of the god of love in Chapter 12. Here, reflecting Dante’s own understanding after Beatrice’s rebuke, love tells him to abandon the pretext of the screen lady. In the same vision love describes himself with the image of a circle: He is at the center of the circle, while the narrator is at its circumference. The image owes something to Boethius’s description of the wheel of FORTUNE in Book 2 of the Consolation of Philosophy. On the circumference of the wheel are those things (riches, power, physical love) that Fortune controls and can take away. Only at the center of the circle, where desire for things of this world is abandoned, is there peace. The center of the circle is where God himself abides, and the circle, an image of perfection, was used by Scholastic philosophers in defining God. The implication of this chapter, then—which the narrator is not yet ready to comprehend—is that the narrator’s love at present is doomed to frustration because it is focused on the carnal beauty of Beatrice. Further the god of love is a kind of distorted image of the God that is love, that is in fact the center of the circle. This is the direction in which the narrator needs to develop.

354 La vita nuova The poems in Chapters 13 through 16, responding to the loss of Beatrice’s greeting and her mocking of him at the wedding feast, are more in the manner of Cavalcanti, being rhetorically simpler than, for example, those of Chapter 8, but having in common the psychological torment that the speaker’s love causes him. But the emphasis on his pain only serves to underscore the self-centered and self-pitying bathos of the narrator’s love. Thus when the lady of Chapter 17 undercuts his lofty posing by pointing out that his love poems are all about himself, he is ashamed because he sees the justice of her evaluation. The significance of the great canzone that emerges from this realization—both for the Vita nuova itself and for the development of Italian poetry in general—cannot be overstated. It is for this poem that ORBICCIANA BONAGIUNTA DE LUCCA recognizes Dante (in Canto 24 of the Purgatorio) as the poet of the DOLCE STIL NOVO (sweet new style), suggesting the revolutionary nature of Dante’s poem with its pure praise of the lady. It is a spontaneous praise that seeks no reward—not even the lady’s greeting. The poem, comprising five 14line stanzas (suggesting a kind of sonnet sequence), describes the virtues of Beatrice through her effect on others, utilizing the language of spiritual love in order to praise the poet’s lady. It is intended to be clear evidence of the narrator’s new understanding of the true nature of love and is an expression of his rebirth, his “new life.” The first stanza of Donne ch’avete addresses the poem to the gentle ladies who had pointed out the egoism of his earlier efforts. These women, he feels, have enough intelligence about love to be able to understand his poem. He resolves to write in a simple style, since he is unworthy to make his style truly reflect the loftiness of is subject. The second stanza presents a dialogue in Heaven, as an angel admires the miracle that is Beatrice. Heaven lacks perfection, according to this stanza, only in lacking her. In the third stanza the speaker outlines Beatrice’s power: Wherever she goes, love destroys evil thoughts. When anyone looks upon her, he is instantly ennobled—or dies if he is unworthy. In her greeting is salvation. Thus Dante presents her as a kind of mediator between

God and man (specifically between God and the poet). This imagery looks forward to implications of Beatrice’s Christlike qualities later in the text. Love speaks in stanza 4, extolling Beatrice as the masterpiece of nature, the most perfect form that nature could produce. Here, for the first and only time in the Vita nuova, through the words of the personified Love, Dante describes the physical beauty of Beatrice, against whom all beauty must test itself. The poet addresses the envoy of the final stanza to the song itself, bidding it to seek out only those who understand love and so are worthy. Donne ch’avete inteletto d’amore is indeed a turning point in the text and marks the beginning of a new understanding of love by the narrator and a new style of poetry for Dante. It owes more to GUIDO GUINIZELLI than to Cavalcanti, recalling Guinizelli’s Al cor gentil (alluded to in Dante’s next sonnet). In that canzone Guinizelli had praised his lady as an angel of Heaven, but he ends imagining himself before God, justifying his mistake. The difference is that Dante never justifies his imagery: Beatrice is as perfect as any angel, and so there is no need for him to apologize.

PART 3 (CHAPTERS 20–30) Synopsis The popularity of Dante’s canzone of praise moves one of his friends to ask the narrator to write a poem defining love itself. The narrator responds in Chapter 20 with a sonnet—Amore e ‘l cor gentil sono una cosa (“Love and the gracious heart are a single thing”)—that borrows substantially from Guido Guinizelli’s famous canzone “Al cor gentil” (“The Gentle Heart”), playing with the identification of love with the noble heart. In Chapter 21 the narrator is moved to write another poem in praise of Beatrice, composing a sonnet that extols the power of love (borne in the eyes of his lady) to instill virtue and expel imperfections in those she looks upon: Ne li occhi porta la mia donna Amore (“The power of Love borne in my lady’s eyes”). Events begin to take a more distressing direction in Chapter 22, when Beatrice’s father dies. The narrator watches his lady’s house and sees a number of ladies returning from visiting Beatrice in her sorrow, hearing them discuss her overwhelm-

La vita nuova ing grief. So moved is he by these reports that he writes a pair of sonnets. In the first of these, Voi che portate la sembianza umile (“O you who bear a look of resignation”), he depicts an exchange between the ladies and himself, in which he asks them to describe Beatrice’s grief. In the second, Se’ tu colui c’hai trattato sovente (“Are you the one that often spoke to us”), he recounts the ladies’ words to him, including their own reaction to his pity and their description of Beatrice’s anguish. The long 23rd chapter presents the aftermath of Beatrice’s father’s death. The narrator falls ill and is assailed by thoughts of mortality, coming to the realization that all must die, even his beloved Beatrice. In his illness (which lasts nine days) he has a macabre vision of a group of unkempt women who tell him first that he will die, and then that he is already dead. Then he sees more women, all weeping as the sun goes dark and birds fall dead to the earth, accompanied by earthquakes. A friend comes to him in the dream and tells him that Beatrice has died, and he weeps inconsolably. But he sees a host of angels escorting Beatrice’s soul to Heaven. A young lady in his sickroom—presumably his sister—is distressed to hear him cry out and must be escorted from the room. Relieved that it was only a dream, Dante, once recovered from his illness, describes his horrific vision in his powerful canzone “Donna pietosa e di novella etate” (“A lady of tender years, compassionate”), the poem that forms the central point of the Vita nuova. The figure of love appears for the last time in Chapter 24, when the narrator sees Beatrice for the last time in the book. Here love speaks directly from the narrator’s blissful heart, drawing attention to the approach of Beatrice. Here Beatrice is approaching, preceded by a lady known as Primavera (who is the beloved of Dante’s friend, Cavalcanti). The narrator notes that Primavera precedes Beatrice as SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST preceded Christ and writes a sonnet describing the incident of, as he says, “a miracle that led a miracle” (Musa 53). This is the poem “Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core” (“I felt a sleeping spirit in my heart”). Chapter 25 is a curious digression in which Dante defends the use of personification ALLEGORY in describing love as a god, asserting that such

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poetic devices were commonly used in Latin poetry and could legitimately be used in love poetry in the vernacular as well. In Chapter 26 the narrator returns to his praise of the lady and writes a sonnet Tanto gentile e tanto obnesta pare (“Such sweet decorum and such gentle grace”) describing Beatrice’s miraculous effect on the men who see her. He adds to this another sonnet, Vede perfettamente onne salute (“He sees an affluence of joy ideal”), this time describing Beatrice’s effect on the women who accompany her. He plans to follow these up in Chapter 27 with a new canzone describing, more specifically, the effect of Beatrice on the narrator himself—the poem “Sì lungiamente m’ha tenuto Amore” (“So long a time has Love kept me a slave”)—but suddenly in Chapter 28 the narrator is forced to break off this new poem when he hears the dreaded news: Beatrice is dead. Dante begins Chapter 28 with a Latin quotation from the Lamentations of Jeremiah (1.1): “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!” (NRSV). While in this he implies the devastation of Beatrice’s death, he declines to go into detail or express his own grief, giving three reasons for his reticence: First, such a lament would not fit the plan of his book; second, he lacks the language to do the topic justice; and third, in lamenting her he would have to write in praise of himself, which he calls “reprehensible” (Musa 61). Instead the narrator focuses in Chapter 29 on the importance of the number 9 in the understanding of Beatrice’s significance. He goes to great lengths to prove that she died on the ninth day of the ninth month (but only if days are counted in the Arabic manner and months are counted in the Syrian manner), at the beginning of the ninth decade of the 13th century. All is related to the nine moving spheres of the heavens, which were perfectly aligned at her birth. She was herself the embodiment of the number 9—a perfect square of the miraculous number of the Trinity. Returning in Chapter 30 to his narrative, Dante says that the quotation from Jeremiah used earlier was from a letter he had written in Latin to the princes of the land, lamenting Beatrice’s death. He has not included the letter in this book, he says,

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because he had intended the book to be entirely in the vernacular language. In this, he says, he is of the same opinion as his friend Guido Cavalcanti, to whom he dedicates the book. Commentary The two sonnets that immediately follow the great canzone demonstrate both Dante’s debt to Guinizelli and his new style of disinterested praise of his lady. In Chapter 20 the sonnet Amore e ‘l cor gentil sono una cosa borrows a theme directly from Guinizelli’s canzone Al cor gentil by proclaiming that love and the noble heart are identical. The poem goes on to discuss love in the Aristotelian terms of potentiality and act, asserting that it is the beauty and virtue of the lady that awaken love from potentiality to act. Dante follows this and plays off it with the sonnet Ne li occhi orta la mia donna Amore in Chapter 21. Here it seems Beatrice is not limited by the Aristotelian process outlined in the previous poem: She miraculously awakens love in all men she looks upon, inspiring all men to act with virtue and to shun vice. These poems in the new style are interrupted in Chapter 22 by the death of Beatrice’s father (FOLCO PORTINARI), which occurred on December 31, 1289. The death of her close relative anticipates Beatrice’s own death even more forcefully than that of her friend in Chapter 8. The narrator’s second sonnet in Chapter 22, however (Se’ tu colui c’hai trattato sovente), represents a kind of aesthetic backsliding: In it the narrator has a group of ladies speak about him and how grief-stricken he seems. Thus the poem focuses not on Portinari nor on his daughter’s grief, but on the histrionic public sorrow of the self-indulgent speaker. The following canzone of Chapter 23, written after the narrator’s vision of Beatrice’s death, is one of the high points of the Vita nuova. Some scholars believe that the poem was not one of Dante’s earlier lyrics collected for use here but was written specifically for the Vita nuova, to serve as the central point of the poem and to anticipate the crisis that will occur upon Beatrice’s actual death. Once again Dante makes use of 14-line stanzas. Stanza 1 creates a vivid dramatic scene (again, a scene presented more concretely than any in the narra-

tive portions of the Vita nuova). A young compassionate lady (generally identified as Dante’s sister) is distressed when the poem’s speaker calls out to Death in his illness, and she must be sent from the room by the other ladies who are attending him. These ladies awaken the speaker, and he wakes from his dream calling out to his lady. As they try to comfort him in the second stanza, the speaker agrees to relate what he has seen in the dream. He describes how he drifted to sleep fretting over his realization of Beatrice’s mortality and in the climactic fourth stanza describes the sun going dark, birds falling from the sky, and the earth shaking, all as portents to the death of Beatrice, announced by a pale man at the end of the stanza. The imagery deliberately recalls the Crucifixion of Christ. This parallel is reinforced in the fifth stanza, where the soul of Beatrice ascends to Heaven in a cloud while a crowd of angels sings, “Hosanna.” The description recalls both Christ’s ascension in Acts 1.9—”When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (NRSV)—and Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when the crowds shout, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (Matthew 21.9, NRSV). The imagery anticipates what Dante will make of her in the Divine Comedy—Beatrice, truly the “bringer of blessings,” the symbol of divine grace. Beatrice’s impending death is presented as an event of universal significance. This imagery continues through Chapter 24, where the narrator observes Cavalcanti’s lady, Giovanna (the feminine form of Giovanni or “John”), walking toward him, preceding his beloved Beatrice in the same way, the narrator says, that John the Baptist preceded Christ. The direct comparison may seem particularly jarring, but the narrator is serious: As Christ saved all the world through his love, so Beatrice will save the narrator. It is puzzling at this point that Dante chooses to include a digressive essay on poetic license in Chapter 25. He defends his personification of love in a way that makes a modern reader wonder (as with his rudimentary structural explanations of his poems throughout the Vita nuova) about the level of sophistication of his first readers. It is true that, as he mentions, love poetry in the vernacular was a

La vita nuova relatively recent phenomenon, and perhaps some of his audience of “gentle ladies” whom he often addresses in these poems may have been unfamiliar with its conventions. But one may well wonder about Dante’s insertion of this chapter at this point. Since it occurs immediately after a chapter in which Dante has made a direct comparison between Beatrice and Jesus Christ—not an angel, not an earthly miracle, but the second person of the Trinity himself—Dante may have felt the need to divert accusations of blasphemy by explaining the use of metaphorical language and poetic license, ostensibly with direct reference to the relatively uncontroversial image of love personified. Of the three poems in praise of Beatrice that follow Chapter 25 the most interesting and the most famous is Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare, a sonnet generally considered representative of the “sweet new style.” It begins with a quatrain describing the effect of the lady’s greeting, so marvelous that its recipient cannot speak to or look upon her. In the second quatrain the lady moves on benignly, as if a miraculous being sent from Heaven to earth. In the sestet the poet describes how the lady’s beauty and sweetness reach men through their eyes, and how a spirit moves from the lady to the soul of anyone she greets. A version of this poem written prior to the Vita nuova that is extant demonstrates how Dante revised some of the poems he included here. In the earlier version the influence of Cavalcanti is more pronounced—love is a more negative force, as the lady’s beauty wounded through the eyes all men who gazed upon her. The narrator presents the poem in Chapter 27 as an “interrupted canzone,” which he broke off upon hearing of the death of Beatrice. Yet the poem is in fact a perfectly self-contained sonnet, though one in the egoistic, self-indulgent style of the early poems in the Vita nuova (it focuses on the pain and weakness the love causes in the speaker). It certainly could be the first 14-line stanza of a canzone like the first two in the book, but it need not be. The narrator’s unemotional response to Beatrice’s death may surprise his readers. From poems he had written earlier about his suffering for love, or his suffering at the deaths of Beatrice’s friend and her father, one might be led to expect a com-

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pletely self-indulgent poem in which the narrator wallows in self-pity. But it appears he has learned his lesson concerning the new style. The poetry must be about the lady, not about him. And how to praise a beloved lady who has died is a problem the narrator is not yet able to tackle. Instead the narrator presents his discourse on the number 9 and discusses the number symbolism that leads him to posit her miraculous nature, the perfect number whose root is the miraculous Trinity. He does mention in Chapter 30 the letter that he wrote to the city of Florence lamenting the loss of Beatrice but does not include it here because, he says, it was written in Latin, and he has determined (agreeing with his friend Cavalcanti, to whom he here dedicates the book) that the book will be written solely in the vernacular language—a statement that implies that aside from remembering and relating the progress of his love for Beatrice, one of the chief purposes of the book is to explore the uses of love poetry in the vernacular.

PART 4 (CHAPTERS 31–36) Synopsis In Chapter 31 the narrator finally discusses his grief at his lady’s death, asserting that he wept so long that he was unable to find any more relief in tears and so wrote another canzone. This third major canzone, Li occhi dolente per pietà del core (“The eyes grieving out of pity for the heart”), initiates the last major division of the book. In it Dante speaks of Beatrice’s death, but not in an exclusively sorrowful way. Instead he uses the poem to praise his lady and to suggest that it was her own virtue and humility that convinced God to take her to himself. Beatrice’s brother, a friend of Dante’s, then goes to the narrator and asks him to write a sonnet for him, lamenting the death of his sister. Dante agrees and sends him a sonnet expressing his own grief in a way that makes it seem to be the brother’s: Venite a intender li sospiri miei (“Now come to me and listen to my sighs”). Dissatisfied with this effort, the narrator follows it with two stanzas of a canzone; the first stanza is truly intended for the brother, and the second expresses his own feelings, describing Beatrice’s famous greeting as now extending to the angels of Heaven. This is the poem Quantunque

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volte, lasso, mi rimembra (“Each time the painful thought comes to my mind”). Chapter 34 marks the anniversary of Beatrice’s death, and on this occasion the narrator sits alone, drawing the figure of an angel on some panels. He becomes aware of a group of important men of the city who have been watching him work for some time, and he apologizes to them for not noticing them before, saying that he was lost in thought because “someone was with [him] just now” (Musa 72)—an enigmatic comment to the gentlemen, but the reader must understand that the thought of Beatrice was with him. When the men leave and he returns to his drawing, the narrator determines to write an anniversary poem for Beatrice—Era venuta ne la mente mia (“Into my mind had come the gracious image”). He includes two different openings for the poem, the first of which he apparently aborted. The next two chapters relate a dramatic new episode in the story. In Chapter 35 the narrator sees at a window a noble young woman (a donna gentile) who looks upon his sorrow with pity and compassion. He begins to be attracted to her, in the belief that she may be able to assuage the grief he has been feeling for his lost Beatrice. He addresses a sonnet to the lady—Videro li occhi miei quanta pietate (“With my own eyes I saw how much compassion”)—in which he recognizes her compassion and hints at the possibility of finding noble love in her. He follows this with another sonnet focusing on his attraction to her, Color d’amore e di pieta sembianti (“Color of love, expression of compassion”), in Chapter 36. Commentary The great canzone to the departed Beatrice in Chapter 31, Li occhi dolente (like the first canzone, Donna ch’avete), contains five 14-line stanzas, to which are added a six-line envoy. The first stanza, addressed, as is Donne ch’avete, to the noble ladies, opens with reference to the narrator’s weeping eyes and ends with the announcement that his theme will be Beatrice’s ascension to Heaven. The second stanza also parallels stanza 2 of Donna ch’avete: In the earlier poem the angels of Heaven had remarked that Heaven lacked perfection if it lacked Beatrice; here it seems that God has

answered the angels—the earth was an unworthy place for the perfection of Beatrice, and so he has brought her to dwell in bliss. In the third stanza the narrator imagines Beatrice in glory. He asserts that those with vile hearts, unable to love, will not weep for her, but that all others will sigh, weep, and wish to die themselves. Again this parallels the third stanza of Donna ch’avete, in which the living Beatrice either converts or kills those with vile hearts and ennobles those worthy to look upon her. In stanza 4 the poet focuses on the ravaging effects of his own grief—his sighs, his anguish, his wish to die. All color is drained from his face, he declares. But at the end he proclaims that speaking the name of Beatrice restores his soul. This contrasts with stanza 4 of Donna ch’avete, which begins with a description of Beatrice as the paragon of beauty (in contrast with the distraught narrator), whose color is compared to the beauty of a pearl. This stanza ends with the universality of Beatrice’s salvific effect, as her eyes penetrate the heart of anyone she meets. Thus both stanzas end with the lady’s bestowing of grace, on all mankind in one, on the individual narrator in the other. The fifth stanza continues this theme of personal torment, and Dante incorporates the “inexpressibility topos”—the conventional literary device of claiming that it is impossible to put his grief into words. The canzone ends with an envoy in which the poet addresses the song itself (as he does in the last verse of Donna ch’avete), telling it to go and find the ladies to whom he sent its happier sister poems. The ultimate effect of Li occhi dolente, as it recalls the earlier canzone, is to suggest that Beatrice herself, though she has been bereft of her earthly body, has not changed in her essence. The poem commemorating the anniversary of Beatrice’s death in Chapter 34 is noteworthy not because of its quality but because Dante has given us two different opening quatrains for the poem. No reason is given for the two separate openings. The first beginning, apparently abandoned, is more closely related to the previous canzone, in that it depicts Beatrice in heavenly glory. The second, more in keeping with the rest of the sonnet, focuses on the poet’s own grief. Since the aborted ver-

La vita nuova sion of the first quatrain is actually in the “new style” of praise, while the body of the sonnet seems to reflect the narrator’s earlier self-centered love, some scholars have suggested that Dante actually wrote the first version of the quatrain later than the rest of the sonnet, perhaps even exclusively for inclusion here in the Vita nuova. But to what end? The effect of the two beginnings is to imply that the grieving narrator, a year after being deprived of Beatrice, had slipped back into his earlier egoism, abandoning the kind of selfless poetry exemplified by the abandoned quatrain. That interpretation is underscored by the episode of the donna gentile at the window. While many contemporary readers might view the narrator’s extended grief as unhealthy and see his willingness to move on to a new love with the window lady as a positive step, that attraction is, in the parameters of the Vita nuova, a serious breach of faith. If the narrator’s love must be selfless, without any thought of physical reward, and if his love is for the perfect essence of Beatrice, the fact that that perfection still exists in glory means that she is still available to love, and to love even more purely. His attraction to the window lady has nothing to do with that lady’s perfections but in fact is inspired completely by her compassion for him: “Whenever an unhappy person sees someone take pity on him,” the narrator says, “he is all the more easily moved to tears, as if taking pity on himself” (Musa 74). Thus this love is solely a self-indulgent, self-pitying exercise, unworthy of the lover of Beatrice.

PART 5 (CHAPTERS 37–42) Synopsis The narrator’s confused emotions reach a crisis point in Chapters 37 and 38, as he steps back from his new relationship with the window lady, heaping contempt upon himself for being unfaithful to the memory of Beatrice: “Never, before death comes, should your tears have ceased,” he tells himself (Musa 76). He describes his conflict in the sonnet L’amaro lagrimar che voi faceste (“The bitter tears that you once used to shed”). The conflict continues in Chapter 38, in which the narrator allows his wish to find peace with the window lady to overpower his desire to remain forever faithful to

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Beatrice, and he expresses this in another sonnet, Gentil pensero che parla di vui (“A thought, gracious because it speaks of you”), in which his heart and soul debate, the soul clinging to Beatrice, and the heart leaning toward the window lady. The conflict is finally resolved in Chapter 39, in which the narrator describes how Beatrice appears to him in a vision one day (not surprisingly in the ninth hour of the day). She is young and dressed in red, as when he first saw her, and he repents his attraction to the window lady and begins to weep again for Beatrice. Having resolved never again to be unfaithful to Beatrice, he writes the sonnet Lasso! Per forza di molti sospiri (“Alas! By the full force of countless sighs”), in which he describes the “vanquishing” of his eyes, which will never again look with longing at another woman. The narrative now moves to Easter 1292, and after a period of some bitter distress, the narrator observes a group of pilgrims passing along the streets and realizes that they know nothing of the things that have been happening in his city. He thinks to himself that if he could stop them for a moment, he would be able to make them weep with his sad story. He writes a sonnet, Deh peregrine che pensosi andate (“Ah, pilgrims, moving pensively along”), in which he addresses the pilgrims with these sentiments. In Chapter 41 two ladies ask Dante for some of his verses, and he complies by sending them the sonnet he wrote to the pilgrims, the sonnet Venite a intender from Chapter 31, and another sonnet not included in the text. He decides as well to write a new poem for them and composes the final poem of the Vita nuova, the famous sonnet Oltre la spera che più larga gira (“Beyond the sphere that makes the widest round”). In this poem the poet places Beatrice in the Empyrean, the heavenly realm where she sits in glory. He describes how his sigh for her ascends to Heaven, sees her there, and returns to him but cannot coherently describe what it saw. In the “subtle words” of the returned spirit the poet can understand only Beatrice’s name. In the final chapter of the Vita nuova the narrator claims that he has received another vision, but this one he does not describe. He says only that the vision makes him resolved to say no more

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about Beatrice until he can do so more worthily. This he will strive to do, he says: He plans to write of her “that which has never been written of any other woman” (Musa 86). After he has done this, he says, God may take his soul to bliss, where he may behold his Beatrice, who contemplates the face of God. Commentary The struggle between the narrator’s attraction to the window lady and his faithfulness to Beatrice is presented, in the sonnet Gentil pensero che parla di vui, as a debate between his passionate heart and his rational soul (his anima pensosa in line 9). In the end it is reason that triumphs, as the narrator indicated it would back in Chapter 2. What is ultimately required is a powerful vision of Beatrice appearing to the narrator as she had when he first saw her. The prepubescent Beatrice, devoid of the carnal attraction of the window lady, serves to remind the narrator of the purity of his love for her, and he says that he gives over the base desire for the donna gentile and returns to reason. This ultimate lesson concerning rational love relates to the circle image of Chapter 12. The carnal desire for an earthly object—even if that object is the mortal part of Beatrice—is bound to cause grief, since all that is mortal will slip away and cannot be possessed. Teodolinda Barolini compares the narrator’s situation here to that of SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO after the death of his friend in Book 4 of the Confessions. Like Augustine, he must learn where true happiness lies: Therefore the lover must learn to redirect his longing to that which cannot fail him, namely the transcendent part of her with which he can be reunited in God, the part that may indeed serve to lead him to God. Viewed from this perspective, the Vita nuova is nothing less than a courtly medieval inflection of the Augustinian paradigm whereby life—new life—is achieved by mastering the lesson of death. (Barolini 23)

The last poem in the Vita nuova (Chapter 41) is one of the most famous sonnets ever written— Oltre la spera che più larga gira. In it Dante makes use of Cavalcanti’s theory of spirits in a situation

perhaps suggested by the pilgrims moving through Florence in the previous canto. Addressed once again to the “dear ladies” who form the audience of many of these lyrics, the poem opens with the speaker’s sigh leaving his heart (it is therefore one of his vital spirits) and traveling beyond the farthest sphere (the Primum Mobile that turns the circles of the heavens). A pilgrim in Heaven, the spirit beholds Beatrice in the radiance of her glory. In the sestet, however, this glory is dimmed as the spirit returns to the world of the speaker. Here there is only confusion, and all the narrator can make out is the name Beatrice—in the mundane world, our glimpses of the eternal are fleeting, and it is only through the memory of heavenly representatives like Beatrice that we can know anything of Heaven at all. Having traveled this far, it is only a small step for Dante to create the Beatrice of the Divine Comedy, she who, as the embodiment of divine wisdom and the symbol of grace, leads the pilgrim Dante to salvation. The Vita nuova ends not with this sonnet but with a final vision that the narrator does not describe. We are told only that as a result of this vision the narrator will write no more about Beatrice until he can do so more worthily. This implies a dissatisfaction with what has been written—even the three great canzoni of the Vita nuova and this famous final sonnet have failed to do justice to the glory that is Beatrice. Perhaps the fact that even in the end the narrator still relies on the Cavalcantian device of the sigh, characteristic of a more carnal love, is evidence that Dante views the poetry of the Vita nuova and its narrator as ultimately a failure. He will write no more of Beatrice, he says, until he writes of her “that which has never been written of any other woman” (Musa 86). It is impossible to read this without seeing the anticipation of the Beatrice of the Comedy.

CHARACTERS Dante the narrator The Vita nuova is autobiographical, but much of the autobiography is certainly fictionalized, or rearranged in ways that better convey the meaning of the events as Dante had come to understand them.

La vita nuova Thus it may be misleading to speak of the protagonist of the text as “Dante” without qualifying that identification by calling him Dante the narrator, as opposed to Dante the poet. The poet, in composing this text, is looking back at a much younger version of himself much of the time, and that younger version displays qualities that the reader is intended to see as foolish, self-centered, and bathetic. He is a dynamic character who develops, in the course of the story, into the man who the poet has become by the time he reexamines his experiences aesthetically in the mid-1290s. In the early chapters of the Vita nuova the narrator is a young, self-indulgent “courtly lover.” As does the typical courtly lover, he trembles at the sight of his lady when he first meets her. When she greets him, he is moved to ecstasy and dreams of the god of love’s feeding Beatrice the narrator’s heart. He becomes weak and frail from his “lover’s malady.” Like the troubadour poets before him, he adopts a series of “screen ladies”—women whom he pretends to be in love with in order to conceal his true love for Beatrice. But his treatment of his second screen lady harms his reputation to the extent that Beatrice herself withholds her greeting from him, a rebuff that throws him into deep despair. The first major change in the narrator’s attitude occurs in Chapter 18, in response to the chiding of a lady who asks him why he loves his lady if she causes him such pain. When he answers that his only joy is in writing poems that praise his beloved, the lady responds that she sees none of that in his poetry, only complaints about his own pain. This causes the narrator to resolve to write only poetry that objectively praises Beatrice, and his poem Donna ch’avete intelletto d’amore in Chapter 19 is the first demonstration of this new, less self-indulgent attitude. The death of Beatrice midway through the Vita nuova causes a new problem for the narrator, who now must try to understand the ultimate meaning of her life and death. He is sidetracked in his development by the episode of the donna gentile at the window in Chapter 35 and afterward, and hopes that this new love will be able to soften the tremendous grief in his heart. But a dream of Beatrice makes him realize that despite her death, she can

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still positively affect his life. His canzone Li occhi dolenti per pietà del core in Chapter 31 expresses his conviction that the angelic Beatrice, though no longer in her bodily form, is in her heavenly essence still the same, and he still hopes for grace from her. By the end of the Vita nuova the narrator has grown from his youthful egoism into a more mature and intellectual lover and finally has some sense of Beatrice in bliss, but he is still unsure what exactly to make of the figure of Beatrice. The text ends with a vision that the narrator does not relate to us, and the promise that he will write of her again when he can write something more worthy of her. Thus the narrator still has some more learning to do—the text ends without a strong sense of closure. Beatrice The only other significant character in the Vita nuova is, of course, Beatrice, the woman whose beauty inspires the narrator’s love, growth, and development. Scholars agree that she is in fact Bici Portinari, daughter of Dante’s neighbor, Folco Portinari. Dante calls her Beatrice, a name that means “Bringer of Blessings.” The text reports that he first met her in 1274, when he was nine years old. At his next significant meeting with her, when he was 18, she greeted him for the first time, and he began to write poetry to her. We know that the historical Beatrice married Simone de’ Bardi in 1287, but Dante does not mention that fact in his text. He does mention the death of her father (which occurred on December 31, 1289) and uses it to foreshadow her own death, which occurred on June 8, 1290. Beatrice was 24 years old. As she appears in the Vita nuova, Beatrice is hardly a character in any modern sense. She never speaks. She is only observed from afar, greeting the narrator at one point, apparently laughing at him at another, and withholding her greeting from him at another, each time throwing him into paroxysms of emotion. Of her own emotions, however, we know nearly nothing. In the early poems of the collection Beatrice is described much as the beloved in any courtly love lyrics is described—mainly through her effect on the narrator himself. But the narrator’s conventional praise of his lady turns into a new

362 De vulgari eloquentia kind of poetry. By Chapter 19 of the Vita nuova the narrator has decided to leave his own emotions out of his poetry and to devote it strictly to the glorification of the perfect being that is Beatrice. Thus in the canzone Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”) he creates what would come to be called the Dolce stil novo (sweet new style) and turns Beatrice into an ideal, angelic creature, so perfect that Heaven itself lacks perfection in not having her. This changes, of course, when she dies. Now when the narrator contemplates her, in Chapter 29, he can only see her as a kind of perfect number, a 9, 3 times 3, a kind of incarnation of the perfections of Heaven. Readers find Beatrice cold, a figure of staid perfection. In the end she is clearly a being in bliss, whom the narrator still has a vague notion of, as his final sonnet describes. But it will not be until the Comedy that he will be able to realize what her perfection finally means for him.

FURTHER READING Barolini, Teodolinda. “Dante and the Lyric Past.” In Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 14–33. New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1993. Dante Alighieri. Dante’s Vita Nuova. Translated by and essay by Mark Musa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973. Goldin, Frederick, ed. and intro. German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973. Harrison, Robert Pogue. “Approaching the Vita nuova.” In Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 34–44. New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1993. ———. The Body of Beatrice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. Mazzaro, Jerome. The Figure of Dante: An Essay on the Vita nuova. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. “The Language of Poetry in the Vita nuova.” Rivista de studi italiani 1 (1988): 3–14. Quinones, Ricardo J. Dante Alighieri. Boston: Twayne, 1979. Reynolds, Barbara. Dante: La Vita Nuova (Poems of Youth). Baltimore: Penguin, 1969.

Scott, John A. Understanding Dante. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Singleton, Charles S. An Essay on the Vita nuova. 1949. Reprint. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

De vulgari eloquentia (Eloquence in the Vernacular) (ca. 1304–1305) De vulgari eloquentia is Dante’s brief, unfinished argument, composed in a Latin prose style not unlike that of the Scholastic philosophers, advocating the use of the vernacular tongue in the composition of poetry on serious subjects—including war, love, and morality. A modern reader may be puzzled at the need for such a document, but in Dante’s Europe it was assumed that any really serious literary, philosophical, or scientific text would be written in Latin, the universal language. Ironically Dante chose to write his defense of the vernacular language in Latin, perhaps the better to convince the more conservative readers of his treatise. Like the CONVIVIO, De vulgari eloquentia was begun shortly after Dante’s exile from FLORENCE in 1302. In his first book (1.12.5) he refers to the marquis Giovanni of Monferrato as still alive, implying the work was probably written in 1304 or 1305. In those first years of his exile Dante was in Bologna, and the complimentary remarks about Bologna that appear in 1.15 may reflect the fact that the text was composed there. In the first book of the Convivio Dante had revealed his plan to write a treatise dealing with poetic eloquence in the vernacular language. This makes it clear that he had begun the Convivio before writing De vulgari eloquentia, though it seems likely that he began work on De vulgari eloquentia while still working on the Convivio, and that he abandoned both texts at some point before 1307, when he was devoting all his composition time to the COMEDY. Dante had been interested in the theoretical justification of serious vernacular literature for several years before approaching the topic in De vulgari

De vulgari eloquentia eloquentia. As early as the 25th chapter of the VITA NUOVA (ca. 1295) the poet had defended his own use of the Italian language for his love poetry, arguing that vernacular poets could legitimately use the kinds of rhetorical and poetic devices utilized by classical Latin authors. In the Convivio Dante writes a philosophical discourse in Italian, taking shape chiefly from commentary on some of his own earlier poetic compositions. Thus De vulgari eloquentia was probably initially intended as a justification for the philosophical Convivio and its discussion of vernacular poetry. Ultimately, however, it also became a defense of Dante’s choice of Italian as the language of his Divine Comedy—although, ironically, in that poem Dante breaks a number of the rules for the vocabulary and style of vernacular poetry that he had proposed in De vulgari eloquentia. This is perhaps because his advice in De vulgari eloquentia is for poets composing tragedies, not comedies. Dante projected four books for his treatise, the first an introductory one on the vernacular language in general, and the other three on three poetic styles appropriate for the writer in the vernacular. Only two books are extant, and the second is incomplete, breaking off in midsentence. In Book 1 Dante argues that the primary or natural language is superior to the one learned in school (i.e., Latin). He looks at the history of language, discussing the language of the earthly paradise and the scattering of languages at the Tower of Babel. He considers whether any of the 14 current Italian dialects can claim to be the “illustrious” vernacular and decides that none deserves this label, asserting that the poets of the language must themselves create the ideal tongue. In Book 2 Dante begins to discuss the art of poetry more specifically, contending that the great themes of war, love, and morality are appropriate for vernacular verse, citing examples of each. A tragic style is most appropriate for such serious subjects, Dante claims, and the appropriate form for that style is the long lyric genre called the CANZONE. Book 2 ends in the midst of Dante’s analysis of the formal components of the canzone. Dante may have intended his third book to deal with prose in the vernacular. The fourth book, as he indicates several times in the extant text, was

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to be concerned with comic poetry. Since Dante never finished his text, it seems unlikely that he intended it for wide circulation in its present form. But there are four extant manuscripts of the text, one of which dates from the 13th century. Today there are four good translations of the text available in English: one by Steven Botterill, one by Sally Purcell, one by Marianne Shapiro, and one by Robert S. Haller. These are listed in the Further Reading section. Citations in my text are to Shapiro’s translation.

BOOK 1 Synopsis The first book is divided into 19 short chapters. In the first Dante begins by announcing that since no one has yet written a theory about the correct use of the vernacular, he intends to do so. He defines the vernacular language as the language that children learn when they first learn to talk and distinguishes it from “grammar,” or the language learned at school—that is, Latin. It is the vernacular, Dante insists, that is the more noble of the two, because it is the first language used, it is used by the entire world, and it is the more natural of the two. His intent, he says, is to study the more noble language. Language was given only to man, Dante says in Chapter 2: Its use is to communicate ideas in the mind, and so it is not needed by angels, who see one another’s thoughts as in a mirror, nor by animals, who can understand one another by their own instincts. Human reason, he says in Chapter 3, needed to communicate mental images through rational signs that could be perceived by the senses, and this system of signs is to be his subject. In Chapter 4 Dante explores the origin of language. He asserts that ADAM must have spoken first, although the Scripture assigns the first speech to Eve. Reason, he says, dictates that something so important must have been done first by the man. And his first word must have been El, the name of the God who created him—the word spoken probably in response to a question addressed to him by God himself (but since God does not use language, the question must have been placed in Adam’s mind by God’s power). Thus Adam’s first word must have been uttered in Paradise. Though some might argue

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that God would know Adam’s thoughts without the need of speech, Dante maintains in Chapter 5 that God would still want Adam to make immediate use of the great gift he had just given man. Dante then asks what language Adam spoke in Paradise (Book 6). Acknowledging that just as all human beings believe their native country is the best—he acknowledges his great love for Florence, which, he says, has caused his exile—so all people believe their own language is superior. But these biases are absurd: After the Tower of Babel confused human language, the sons of Heber went away as the only group to maintain the primal human language, which became Hebrew. Since Christ was to be born among these people, it was important that their language be kept uncorrupted. In Chapter 7 Dante retells the story of Babel, condemning mankind’s presumption in trying to build the tower and blaming the giant NIMROD for urging men to sin. All mankind, he says, was involved in the labor except Heber’s sons (descended, he says, from Noah’s son Shem), who ridiculed it. And when God confused their tongues, he did so according to the workers’ groups, so that, for example, all the architects spoke their own language, while all the masons spoke another. After this the human race was scattered through the world, each tribe with its own language. Europe originally was settled by groups speaking three languages—the Greek language in the east and into Asia, the language of the northern peoples from England to the mouth of the Danube, and the language of the south. This last group is itself divided into three: those who say oc (in southern France and Spain—Dante seems to have had no real knowledge of Spanish), those who say si (in Italy), and those who say oil (in northern France). In Chapter 9 Dante proceeds to examine what he calls his own language, by which he means the Romance languages of southern Europe that he enumerated in Chapter 8. All were one language before the confusion caused by Babel, Dante says, pointing to numerous words that they have in common. He quotes the troubadour GIRAUT DE BORNELH (GUIRAUT DE BORNEIL) (in Provençal), the king of Navarre (i.e., Thibaut de Champagne, in French), and GUIDO GUINIZELLI (in Italian) to

show the similarity of the word for “love” in each language. But why did the language separate into these three branches? For that matter why are there so many variations even within the Italian tongue? Man is changeable, says Dante, and therefore his language, like his manners and customs, will also change over time. This, Dante asserts, is why “grammar” (i.e., the Latin of the schools) was invented: to provide a stable language that would make communication across time more certain. Each of the three main languages has claim to preeminence, Dante says (the langue d’oil can claim charming narratives like the Arthurian romances, the langue d’oc had the earliest writers of vernacular verse, while the Italians are closest to Latin itself and have the subtlest poets, including CINO DA PISTOIA and “his friend”—Dante’s euphemism for himself). Without deciding among the three, Dante turns his focus to the languages of Italy. Even in Italian, he says, there are at least 14 different dialects, each of which has its own variations so that in fact there are probably 1,000 forms of the Italian tongue. In Chapter 11 Dante begins to sift through the Italian vernaculars in order to find the most excellent one. He rejects that of Rome for its “coarseness” and goes on for equally subjective reasons to eliminate the dialects of the March of Ancona, of Milan and Bergamo, of Aquileia and Istria, of Casentino and Fratta, and of Sardinia (where, he says, they imitate Latin like apes). He spends some time in Chapter 12 on the Sicilian dialect, praising GUIDO DELLE COLONNE and other Sicilian poets from the time of the noble FREDERICK II OF SWABIA and MANFRED, but he ultimately finds that the speech of the common native Sicilian is full of “superfluous syllables,” and the dialect of the Apulians is too coarse. Dante now turns to the Tuscan cities, whether Florence, PISA, Lucca, Siena, or AREZZO. They are deluded if they think their dialect the most excellent. He condemns out of hand poets like GUITTONE D’AREZZO, ORBICCIANA BONAGIUNTA DA LUCCA, Gallo of Pisa, Mino Mocato of Siena, and Brunetto of Florence, calling their verse “municipal” rather than courtly. He admits that GUIDO CAVALCANTI, LAPO GIANNI, Cino da Pistoia, and “one other” (himself) have achieved excellence in

De vulgari eloquentia their poetry, but only as they deviated from their Tuscan dialect. In Chapter 14 Dante looks at the other side of the Apennines to discuss dialects in the east (which he calls the “left”) side of Italy. The dialect of Romagna, he says, makes anyone speaking it sound like a woman. In VERONA and Padua, however, the dialect is so rough that even a woman speaking it sounds like a man. The Venetians are no better, Dante says, though he singles out Aldobrandino of Padua as one who has tried to write in the courtly language. Finally, Dante discusses the Bolognese dialect, saying in Chapter 15 that it is the sweetest of the Italian vernaculars, borrowing the best from its neighbors in Romagna and Lombardy. Still Bolognese cannot be called the most illustrious Italian, since even Bologna’s own great poets (including Guido Guinizelli and others) turned away from native expressions in their verse. As for cities like Turin, Trent, and Alessandria on the borders of Italy, their dialect is too mixed with foreign expressions to be pure Italian. But there must be a standard for language, Dante says in Chapter 16, as the numeral 1 is the standard measure in numbers and white the standard for colors. He has been hunting for the illustrious vernacular, he says, comparing the search to hunting a panther. The ideal Italian language, the standard against which all dialects may be measured, exists wholly in no single dialect, but traces of it may be seen in all of them. The vernacular he is seeking, he says (Chapter 17), is illustrious because it is clear and polished, it is able to change the human heart, and its use gives great honor to the poets who employ it. This language is also cardinal in the sense that it stands first among all the varieties of Italian. It is also courtly, being the manner of speech that would occur in the royal court if Italy had such a court— since Italy does not, the illustrious language has no home. Finally, the language is curial (i.e., it pertains to law and justice) because it is well balanced. Book 1 ends with a summary statement that the illustrious Italian vernacular is found in no single region but has been formed by the great poets who have written in every dialect of the region. He then promises that in the books to come, he will discuss who should use this vernacular, what subjects

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it should deal with, in what forms, and for what audience. Commentary The most radical aspect of De vulgari eloquentia is Dante’s claim that the vernacular is in fact superior to Latin. The prevailing medieval notion is that the polished, rational, universal Latin tongue must be superior to the undisciplined and changing vernacular. Dante argues, instead, that the natural (and hence God-given) vernacular language is in fact nobler than the artificial (and hence manmade) Latin “grammar.” Later, however (in Chapter 9), Dante asserts that the art of grammar was invented in order to arrest the corrupting effects of the confusion wrought by the dispersal of tongues at Babel. (The “giant Nimrod” whose presumption causes this confusion will appear again in Canto 31 of the INFERNO.) The illustrious vernacular itself is another bulwark against the corruption of Babel. As Dante presents it, it is a “ ‘transcendent’ template,” not unlike a Platonic form, on which the 14 dialects of Dante’s contemporaries are “all (imperfectly) modeled” (see Ascoli, “The Unfinished Author,” 59). It is important to note two significant differences between this section of De vulgari eloquentia and Canto 26 of the PARADISO, where the pilgrim Dante speaks with Adam. Here Dante is quite orthodox in asserting the unchanged nature of Hebrew. In the Paradiso, however, Dante radically has Adam remark that the language he spoke in Paradise was extinct even before Babel (ll. 124–126), because the nature of all languages is to change. And while in the Paradiso it is true that Adam’s first word was God, it was not the Hebrew El but rather I in the original language (suggesting the unity of God). More conservatively in De vulgari eloquentia, Dante, like his contemporaries, sees language as God-given and views its history through the lens of Genesis, and although his judgments as to the quality of the different Italian dialects are purely subjective—Parma is ridiculed because they say monto instead of multo—his definition of language is still quite insightful from a modern linguistic standpoint: Language is a system of signs that human beings use to communicate. Though ideas are in the mind, they must be communicated through the

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senses (presumably through the ear or eye, through speech or writing). Dante also anticipates modern historical linguistics by recognizing the relationship among the Romance languages of his day through their cognates for words such as love. Chapters 11 and 12 Dante engages in a long digression, an homage to Frederick II of Swabia and his son, Manfred, which foreshadows his later political thinking about the need for an emperor in Italy to counterbalance the secular power of the church. It was in the Imperial court of Frederick that the courtly poetry of Sicily achieved the great heights it did, and the lack of a contemporary court becomes an obstacle to the courtly style necessary for the illustrious vernacular in Chapter 18. Finally, it may be worth commenting on the image of the panther used in Chapter 16 as metaphor for the illustrious vernacular. The panther was said to have a sweet breath that drew all other creatures to it. Thus it was a beast that all others wanted to be with. In the same way the ideal language is sought after by all men but cannot be found in any one dialect—just as in his metaphor Dante has failed to hunt down the panther.

BOOK 2 Synopsis Dante begins his second book with the declaration that the illustrious vernacular Italian may be used for prose or poetry, but that he will begin by discussing poetry because verse is superior and serves as a model for prose. All writers of verse in Italian may use the illustrious vernacular, but it is not appropriate for all poets, and even the greatest poets should not use it on all occasions. Only the most talented and learned poets should use it, and then only for appropriate subjects. In Chapter 2 Dante explains that the worthiest language should be used for the worthiest subjects. He considers the three-part structure of the human soul: the vegetable soul, which seeks what is useful; the animal soul, which seeks what is pleasurable; and the rational soul, which seeks what is good. The highest goals of these three souls, he says, are security, love, and virtue. These are therefore the three highest subjects for poetry and worthiest to be celebrated in the highest language: martial valor, love,

and righteousness. Dante celebrates three troubadours for their achievements in these themes: BERTRAN DE BORN on war, ARNAUT DANIEL (ARNAUD) on love, and Giraut de Bornelh on virtue. He then similarly praises Cino de Pistoia as a love poet in the Italian vernacular, and Cino’s “friend” (i.e., Dante) as an Italian poet of righteousness. The noblest poetic form, Dante continues in Chapter 3, is the canzone, and therefore the canzone should be used for the highest poetic subjects. He dismisses the ballata as an incomplete art form, since it relies on dances as well as verse. The canzone comprehends within itself the whole art of poetry, which briefer forms (such as the SONNET) do not. With Chapter 4 Dante begins his discussion of the canzone (declaring his intention of dealing with the sonnet and the ballata in Book 4). Defining poetry as a composition involving rhetoric and music, he defends his use of the term poet for vernacular writers, though he insists they must emulate the disciplined technique of the classical poets. The canzone, he says, should be used for the highest style, which is tragic. Comic poetry should use the middle or low style (which he says he will discuss in Book 4). Anyone singing of the highest subjects— security, love, or virtue—should do so in the tragic style. But the vernacular poet should only attempt this after much study and practice. In Chapter 5 Dante considers meter and concludes that while vernacular poets have used lines varying from three to 11 syllables, the hendecasyllabic line is the most sublime, because of its capacity to accommodate complex thought. He quotes from Giraut de Bornelh, Thibaut of Champagne, Guido Guinizelli, and others, including again Cino da Pistoia and his “friend,” all of whom he says recognized the inherent excellence of the 11-syllable line. He mentions that three-, five-, and seven-syllable lines have sometimes been highly thought of, but that the 11-syllable line is superior. Lines with even numbers of syllables, he says, are seldom used because of their “crudeness.” Moving on to word order and sentence structure in Chapter 6, Dante cites what he considers examples of four ranked categories of sentences in Latin. The simplest he calls plain and tasteless. The second level he cites as tasteful. The third he

De vulgari eloquentia calls both tasteful and charming. But the noblest sentence is also lofty and is characteristic of the illustrious vernacular. Dante’s example of this may be translated “When most of its flowers had been cast from your bosom, Florentia, Totila the second journeyed in vain to Sicily” (Shapiro 77). He then goes on to quote examples of such lofty sentences from six troubadours and five more Italian poets, including his former friend Guido Cavalcanti as well as, again, Guido Guinizelli, Cino da Pistoia, and Cino’s “friend.” He recommends the study of classical Latin writers like Virgil, OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO), PUBLIUS PAPINUS STATIUS, LUCAN (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS), LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS), Pliny, and PAULUS OROSIUS to learn this kind of construction and once again condemns Guittone d’Arezzo for his “plebian” construction. Dante now considers vocabulary, categorizing individual words as “childish,” “feminine,” “masculine,” “rustic,” and “urbane.” He further divides the “urbane” words into either “combed and glossy” or “hairy and bristly.” The illustrious vernacular cannot include words that are childish, feminine, masculine, or rustic. Of the urbane words the poet should avoid glossy or bristly words. Thus the high style only admits words Dante calls “combed” and “hairy.” As he explains, it is clear Dante is concerned chiefly with the sounds of the words. The “combed” words should have three syllables and should not include aspirates, truncated forms, double z or x, or liquids after stops (like p- or t-)—all sounds Dante thought of as harsh. As for “hairy” words, these are words that are either necessary (conjunctions, articles, interjections) or decorative, and the decorative words should be polysyllabic. Dante spends Chapter 8 defining the canzone (whose name means “song”) in terms of its poetic text and not its musical performance. It is a poem made up of ordered stanzas without a refrain, written on a single theme and in a tragic style. No longer coyly referring to himself as “Cino’s friend,” he refers to his own poem “Donne, ch’avete intelletto d’amore” (“Ladies, who have intelligence of love” from Chapter 19 of the Vita nuova) as the model canzone. In Chapter 9 Dante discusses the stanzas that make up canzoni. He calls the stanza a “spacious edifice” or “mansion” (the literal mean-

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ing of stanza) containing in itself the art of the whole poem. Its composition depends, Dante says, on three elements: the musical setting, the arrangement of parts, and the number of lines and syllables per line. Once these are established in the first stanza, they cannot be varied in the rest of the canzone. Now Dante goes on to examine these three aspects of the canzone: In Chapter 10 Dante explores the stanzaic variety created by the musical setting. Sometimes one melody is used throughout a poem—this is the case with most of Arnaut Daniel’s canzoni. Most stanzas make use of a diesis, a transition between melodies. If a melody repeats itself before the diesis, its divisions are called feet before and verses after the transition. If there is no repeated melody before the break, the beginning of the stanza is called a frons (head). If there is no repetition after the diesis, the ending is called a cauda (tail). In Chapter 11 Dante gives a complex catalog of possible arrangements of these parts: The frons may have more lines and syllables than the verses, or may have more lines but fewer syllables, or vice versa. The same can be said of feet and cauda. Dante cites examples from his own poetry to illustrate these matters. He does stress, at the end, that verses and feet must have equal numbers of lines and syllables, since it is in these that the melody must be repeated. Dante moves on to discuss more specifically the arrangement of lines in Chapter 12. He reiterates that the 11-syllable line is the noblest, though vernacular poets have also commonly used lines of seven or five syllables. Some great canzoni have all hendecasyllable lines, like Cavalcanti’s “Donna mi prega” (“A Lady Asks Me”) and his own Donne, ch’avete intelletto d’amore mentioned earlier. He says that the canzone may include such shorter lines, but that they must be used sparingly, so that 11-syllable lines still dominate the stanza, and the shorter lines must be used according to a pattern that allows for repetition of the melody in the feet or the verses. In Chapter 13 Dante examines rhyme, though he says he plans to revisit the subject at more length in later books. He enumerates a large number of possible rhyme schemes and suggests that poets have the greatest freedom in the arrangement of rhymes.

368 De vulgari eloquentia As extremes he mentions the unrhymed stanza (whose rhyme words will be repeated in later stanzas of the canzone) used by Arnaut Daniel and in Dante’s own “Al poco giorno” (“To the short day”), and the stanza with a single rhyme. He goes on to mention the poet Goto of Mantua, who would include one unrhymed line (the “key” line) in each stanza, which was later rhymed with a line in the next stanza. Dante goes on to suggest that different rhymes might be used before and after the diesis but suggests that a linking effect might be achieved if the first line of the second section rhymes with the last line of the first. He also recommends a rhyming couplet at the end of a stanza to create a harmonious ending. Dante ends the chapter by cautioning against three things: A poet should not overuse the same rhyme, Dante says. Nor should he use plays on words, which distract from the poem’s theme. Finally, Dante warns against the use of “harsh rhymes,” though he allows them if they are mixed with more gentle-sounding rhymes. In Chapter 14 Dante intends to look at the third aspect of the stanza, the numbers of lines and syllables recommended. He begins by listing all the possible reasons one might have for writing—to persuade or dissuade, to praise or scorn, and so on. But then the text breaks off. Dante never completes his treatise. Commentary In Book 2 Dante moves from the interesting and original exploration of historical linguistics in the first book to what, for modern readers, may seem a dry, technical exploration of the canzone as a literary form. But Book 2 is in many ways just as original as Book 1. Medieval handbooks of poetry—such as Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s popular Poetria nova (ca. 1200)—were generally compilations of rhetorical tropes and figures. Dante avoids the discussion of these devices and focuses on structure and diction, emphasizing the principle of compatibility between the style of a poem and its subject matter. Thus the noblest language—the illustrious vernacular— should be used only for the noblest subjects (war, love, or virtue) and only in the noblest verse form (the canzone). In this Dante is much closer to classical theorists, like HORACE (QUINTUS HORATIUS

FLACCUS) in his Ars poetica, who makes the point that tragic meter and comic meter should be appropriate to the subject matter for which they are used. It is important to remember that when Dante uses the terms tragic and comic here, he is referring not to literary genres but to types of meter as defined in classical Latin verse. But Dante illustrates his comments about poetic form and style with quotations from “modern” poets in the vernacular, either Provençal or Italian. He urges his readers (and he seems to assume that many of his readers will be aspiring poets) to read and to study, complaining that the chief difference between the great classical poets and those of his own day is that the older poets knew and followed aesthetic rules, rather than composing “according to chance” as he says in Chapter 4. He cites 19 different poets in De vulgari eloquentia, including the troubadour Giraut de Bornelh and the Italian Guido Guinizelli four times each. He also cites Cino da Pistoia three times, singling him out as the great Italian love poet and his own special friend. In this Cino seems to take the place of Guido Cavalcanti, Dante’s “first friend” and poetic father in the Vita nuova, whom he cites only once in De vulgari eloquentia. This may be in part because Guido had died, and also perhaps because Dante’s relationship with Guido had been strained by Dante’s voting with the priors of Florence to exile Guido for his part in the Black-White feuding in 1300. Cino’s importance may also be accounted for by that fact that he, like Dante, was living in exile in Bologna from 1303 to 1306. Dante, who had been staying with Bartolomeo della Scala since shortly after his own banishment in 1302, probably moved to Bologna upon Bartolomeo’s death in 1304 and became a close friend of Cino there. One Italian poet Dante singles out for abuse is Guittone d’Arezzo, chief poet of the Tuscan school that preceded Dante, Cavalcanti, and the other stilnovist poets. He seems to have considered Guittone’s verse vulgar and calls it “municipal” rather than courtly in 1.13. Part of the reason for this may be the complex rhetorical flourishes used by the Tuscans, which Dante thought overwrought and tasteless, and this fact could be one reason Dante avoids discussing such devices in De vulgari eloquentia. Dante slights Guittone once more in 2.2,

De vulgari eloquentia when he lists the great vernacular poets of war, love, and virtue. The poets of love are the Italian Cino and the Provençal Arnaut Daniel (whom Dante extols in PURGATORIO 26, l. 117 as “the better craftsman”); the poets of righteousness are Giraut de Bornelh in Provençal and “Cino’s friend” in Italian. As for poets of war, Dante cites the troubadour Bertran de Born (whom he will present among the sowers of discord in Inferno 28, holding his head like a lantern), but no equivalent Italian poet is mentioned. The most likely Italian would in fact be Guittone d’Arezzo, whose famous canzone lamenting the dead at the Battle of Montaperti had won him a reputation as a poet of war. Dante’s snub of Guittone here is, in effect, a rejection of his entire mode of poetry. Dante’s references to himself as “Cino’s friend” stop when he begins discussing the canzone in 2.8. He refers to himself seven more times after this, ultimately citing nine of his own canzoni. Thus he begins modestly, preserving his anonymity until well into his treatise, as rhetoricians of his time would have advised. But once he decides to reveal his identity he flings all modesty aside and depicts himself, in no uncertain terms, as the premier lyric poet in the vernacular. While in the minds of most Italians this estimation was probably exaggerated, at least until the publication of the Inferno some years later, the self-positioning does give the narrator of De vulgari eloquentia a certain authority for his original pronouncements about poetic form. The fiery personality we see in some of Dante’s poetry is also manifest in other places in the text, most noticeably in the final sublime sample Latin sentence he provides in 2.6: “In vain,” he says here, did the “Totila the second” journey to Sicily. Totila was the leader of the Ostrogoths who destroyed Florence in the sixth century. The second Toltil to whom Dante refers here is CHARLES OF VALOIS, POPE BONIFACE VIII’s puppet, who marched into Florence to “pacify” the city by handing it over to the Black Guelphs. Dante’s scathing remarks made clear his White political affiliation, even in this ostensibly apolitical work. Two other points are worth mentioning. In 2.10, when Dante explains the intimate relationship between music and the canzone, it may remind

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modern readers of the way he famously illustrates this relationship in Canto 2 of the Purgatorio (ll. 106–117), when the musician CASELLA’s performance of Dante’s canzone Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona (“Love that speaks to me in my mind”) holds a crowd of souls in rapt attention even on their way to salvation. Modern readers, particularly those most familiar with English poetry, will find it strange, however, that Dante in 2.4 refers to the “crudeness” of the familiar octasyllabic and decasyllabic lines of English verse and sees lines with odd-numbered syllables as more melodious. But Dante’s preferences are based on traditional Christian numerology, influenced by PYTHAGORAS. Three is the number of the Trinity; 9 is the square of 3. There are five wounds of Christ, five joys of the Virgin, and five senses. There are seven deadly sins, seven virtues, seven gifts of the spirit, seven heavenly spheres, and seven last words of Christ. In order to reach the significance of any of these odd numbers, the even numbers must all add 1—the number of the unity of God.

FURTHER READING Ascoli, Albert Russell. “ ‘Neminem ante nos’: Historicity and Authority in the De vulgari eloquentia.” Annali d ‘italianistica 8 (1990) 163–231. ———. “The Unfinished Author: Dante’s Rhetoric of Authority in Convivio and De vulgari eloquentia.” In The Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 45–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Dante Alighieri. De Vulgari Eloquentia. Edited and translated by Steven Botterill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Dante Alighieri. Literature in the Vernacular (De Vulgari Eloquentia). Translated with an introduction by Sally Purcell. Manchester, England: Carcantet New Press, 1981. Haller, Robert S., ed. and trans. Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973. Scott, John A. Understanding Dante. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Shapiro, Marianne, trans. De Vulgari Eloquentia: Dante’s Book of Exile. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.

PART III

Related Entries

A Abbagliato The term, meaning something like “muddlehead” or “dazed,” is used in Canto 29 of the INFERNO as a nickname for a famous Sienese squanderer named Bartolomeo dei Folcacchieri. The counterfeiter CAPOCCHIO mentions “Abbagliato” while poking fun at the Sienese in general (a popular pastime among Florentines). Although Bartolomeo held a number of very responsible positions in Siena during the last quarter of the 13th century (including chancellor in 1279 and podestà [executive officer] of Montegerioni in 1290 and of Monteguidi in 1300), he seems to have belonged to the infamous Sienese “Spendthrifts’ Brigade,” a group of 12 wealthy young citizens whose members apparently competed with one another in wasteful extravagance. Capocchio says ironically that Abbagliato demonstrated “great wit,” but no one knows what this alludes to. There is a record that Bartolomeo was fined in 1278 for drinking in a tavern, but this hardly seems likely to have invited Capocchio’s comments.

threat by Bolognese officials to confiscate his property if he left the university. Francesco taught at Oxford until 1281, living at Edward’s expense at Beaumont Palace. Meanwhile his property in Bologna had been seized, and he had been proscribed as a GHIBELLINE. Upon his homecoming in 1281, however, the Bolognese returned his possessions to him. He died in Bologna in 1294. Dante places Francesco in circle seven, round three, of the INFERNO—the round of the sodomites. He is pointed out here, along with the Latin scholar Priscian, by Dante’s former teacher, BRUNETTO LATINI, who says that there are many scholars and men of letters like these among the sodomites. Achilles Achilles is the greatest Greek hero of the Trojan War, son of the mortal Peleus and the sea nymph Thetis. HOMER’s Iliad sings of his wrath and of his final defeat of the Trojan prince Hector. Dante was most familiar with the medieval version of Achilles’ story as related in Dictys Cretensis’s De Bello Troiano and Dares Phrygius’s De excidio Troiae: In this medieval tradition Achilles was enamored with the Trojan princess Polyxena and was lured to a promised meeting with her in Troy’s Temple of Apollo Thymbraeus. But the meeting was a trap set by Queen Hecuba (Polyxena’s mother) with her sons Paris and Deiphobus, and Achilles was slain treacherously by Paris, who left him to die in the temple. Thus Dante places Achilles among the lustful in the second circle of Hell and says that his last battle was against love

Accorso, Francesco d’ (1225–1294) An eminent Florentine jurist, Francesco d’Accorso was born in Bologna in 1225, the son of another wellknown legal scholar, Accorso da Bagnolo, who taught at the university there. Francesco, too, became a celebrated professor of law in Bologna. When England’s King Edward I, returning from an unsuccessful crusade, stopped at Bologna in 1273, he invited Francesco to return to England with him and lecture at Oxford. Francesco agreed, despite a 373

374 Adam (INFERNO 10, ll. 66–67). Here he is portrayed as being in the company of Paris, his own slayer, and Helen, whose unfaithfulness with Paris sparked the entire Trojan War. The importance of the figure of Achilles in classical mythology is clear from several other allusions to his story through the COMEDY. Achilles was reared by the centaur Chiron, who taught him the skills of arms—a detail mentioned when Chiron is introduced as one of the centaur guards over the violent in circle seven (Inferno 12, l. 71). When she learns he will die at Troy, Achilles’ mother spirits him in his sleep to the island of Skyros in order to hide him—an incident that becomes part of an epic simile in PURGATORIO 9, lines 34–39. On the island Achilles became involved with Deidamia, daughter of Lycomedes, king of Skyros, only to desert her when ULYSSES finds him and takes him to the war. In his speech from the bolgia of deceivers Ulysses mentions Deidamia’s weeping for Achilles in Inferno 26, line 62. Early in the war Achilles wounded Heracles’ son, Telephus, but was ultimately able to heal the wound with rust from his spear. This dual ability of Achilles’ spear both to wound and to heal is alluded to in Inferno 31, l. 5. Finally in Purgatorio 21, l. 92, the Roman poet PUBLIUS PAPINUS STATIUS speaks of his unfinished poem on the deeds of Achilles—a task he admits was too much for him. Adam Adam, the first human in Western religious traditions, plays a prominent role in Dante’s COMEDY and is mentioned as well in some of the poet’s other works. In Book 4 of his CONVIVIO Dante argues that since all human beings are descended from Adam, birth can be no sign of true nobility: All have the same parent, so according to birth either all are noble or all are baseborn (4.15.3–4). In the INFERNO Virgil mentions Adam as one of those released by Christ when he harrowed Hell and took the souls of the righteous into Heaven (Canto 4, l. 55). Later in the earthly paradise atop Mount Purgatory the pilgrim Dante witnesses a procession of souls encircling the barren Tree of Knowledge and murmuring the name of Adam (PURGATORIO 32, l. 37), which recalls the initial loss of Paradise due to his disobedience in eating the fruit of that tree.

Later in the Mystic Rose that stands at the zenith of the heavenly spheres the pilgrim sees Adam sitting at the left hand of the Virgin Mary, a position merited by his being the first to believe in the future Christ (just as SAINT PETER, first to believe in the Christ who had come, sits at Mary’s right) (PARADISO 32, ll. 121–126). The fullest treatment of Adam in the Comedy, however, occurs in Canto 26 of the Paradiso. Here Adam appears in the sphere of the fixed stars, beside SAINT JOHN THE APOSTLE, SAINT JAMES THE APOSTLE, and Saint Peter, who have just examined Dante’s faith, hope, and love. Now Dante turns interrogator and asks Adam four questions: How long ago was Adam created, how much time did Adam live in the Earthly Paradise before his expulsion, what was the true nature of Adam’s sin, and what language did Adam speak? Adam responds to the pilgrim, taking the questions in order of importance rather than in the order Dante asked them. First, he tells Dante that his sin was not in the eating of the fruit but rather in disobeying God, an act caused by his pride. Next he answers that he lived for 930 years and that he spent 4,302 years in Limbo before Christ rescued him (in 34 C.E., by Adam’s reckoning). Thus by Adam’s calculations he was created in 5,198 B.C.E., or 6,498 years before the action of the narrative, Easter weekend of 1300. As for his language, Adam says that the tongue he spoke was extinct before the confusion of human speech at the Tower of Babel. In this Dante was correcting his own earlier theory expressed in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA (1.6.5–7), that Adam’s language was Hebrew and created by God. In the Paradiso Adam says that, while language is natural to human beings, the specific form of that language varies according to human will. Finally, expressing a view Dante borrowed from the Historia scholastica of the 12th-century theologian Peter Comestor, Adam reveals that his entire time in Paradise lasted only from dawn on the day of his creation until the hour that follows noon—that is, only about seven hours. Adam, Master (d. 1281) Though he is sometimes called Adam of Brescia, recent scholars have

Adrian V, Pope questioned Master Adam’s birthplace, and many believe that Adam was not Italian at all. He gained notoriety through his audacious counterfeiting of Florentine gold florins, and Dante places Adam in the 10th bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell—the bolgia of the falsifiers (INFERNO 30, ll. 49–129). The florin, stamped on one side with the fleurde-lis and on the other with the image of FLORENCE’s patron saint, SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST (mentioned in Dante’s line 76), was first minted in 1252 and by Dante’s time had become the standard currency of Europe. By legal standard the florin was required to contain 24 carats of gold, but Adam flooded the market with false florins containing only 21 gold carats. The result of Adam’s activities was a serious currency crisis throughout northern Italy, and ultimately Adam was discovered and arrested by Florentine authorities. Because counterfeiting was considered a crime against the state, Adam was burned at the stake in Florence in 1281. Master Adam had been in the employ of the four Conti Guidi of Romena (Guido, Alessandro, Aghinolfo, and Ildebrando), whom in Dante’s text Adam craves to see suffering with him in Hell. He has learned that one is there already—doubtlessly Guido, who had died in 1292 (l. 79). The other three counts were still alive at the fictional date of Dante’s pilgrimage, Easter weekend 1300. Dante presents Adam as suffering from an exaggerated case of dropsy that swells his body in such a grotesque manner that Dante calls him a man shaped like a lute—his swollen lower belly bulging like the pear-shaped body of that instrument. But despite his fluid-swollen belly, Adam suffers from an unquenchable thirst and is tormented by visions of cool streams. Once he has told his story to Dante and Virgil, Adam points out two other falsifiers: Potiphar’s wife, who falsely accused Joseph (in Genesis 39), and SINON, the Greek warrior who convinced the Trojans to draw the Trojan horse into the city and bring about their own destruction. Sinon, angered at Adam’s revelations about him, punches the counterfeiter in his swollen paunch, and the two bicker over which is the worse sinner. Sinon argues that he is condemned to Hell for only one sin, while Adam has committed thousands— each false coin being a separate sin.

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Adrian V, Pope Ottobuono de’ Fieschi of Genoa was elected Pope Adrian V on July 11, 1276 (succeeding Innocent V), and died at Viterbo on August 18, only 38 days later. Adrian was a member of a distinguished noble family of the counts of Lavagna, and his career in the church was aided by the fact that he was the nephew of Pope Innocent IV. He had been a successful papal legate in England before his election and between 1265 and 1268 was instrumental in establishing peace after the Barons’ War in that country. He then preached the crusade of 1270 so successfully that England’s Prince Edward, soon to become King Edward I, joined the crusade. Dante places Pope Adrian in the fifth terrace of Purgatory, among the avaricious, although there is no historical evidence of Adrian’s avarice (PURGATORIO 19, ll. 79–145). In the text of Canto 19 as Dante and Virgil enter the fifth terrace, they see a group of souls lying face down. When they ask the spirits directions to the next level, one of the souls advises them to bear to the right. Dante approaches the speaker and finds that it is Pope Adrian V. In answer to the pilgrim’s question Adrian reveals his identity and says that his sin was avarice. Those punished in this round, he explains, had turned their eyes toward earthly things and away from Heaven during their lives and so in Purgatory are bound face-downward. When Dante kneels to him out of respect for his office, the humble Adrian chides him, telling the pilgrim that earthly privilege has no place in the eternal realm. Adrian tells Dante that he was a late convert, having truly turned to God only after becoming pope, in the last month of his life. Again there is no historical evidence for Adrian’s late conversion, although it has been suggested that Dante may have confused Adrian V with Adrian IV: Some commentators suggest that Dante was thinking of a passage in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (8. 23. 814) attributed to the 12th-century Pope Adrian IV, in which the pope says that all his honors have gained him no happiness. Canto 19 ends with Adrian’s dismissing Dante and mentioning that the only thing left in the world that he cares about is his niece, Alagia. He expresses the wish that she be shielded from the

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Aeneid, The

corrupting influence of the rest of his family. Alagia de’ Fieshci, Adrian’s niece, was the wife of Dante’s friend the marquis MOROELLO MALASPINA of Valdimagra, who hosted Dante in his exile in about 1307. Dante knew Alagia and admired her virtue and so immortalized her in this fashion in his COMEDY. Aeneid, The (19 B.C.E.) Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic poem in 12 books, was the greatest of all poems in classical Latin and as such exerted a profound influence on the language, literature, and ideas of late classical and medieval Europe. Aeneas, son of Anchises and the goddess Venus, is a Trojan of noble blood whose destiny is to rule over the Trojans and become the founder of an eternal dynasty. Thus finished in 19 B.C.E. during the reign of Augustus, Virgil’s Aeneid glorified the legendary founder of the Roman nation and legitimized the Roman Empire as divinely ordained. Virgil’s story opens as Aeneas and a small band of Trojans land at Carthage, where he relates to Queen DIDO the account of his escape from the burning city of Troy and his subsequent wanderings. Dido falls in love with him, but their affair is cut short when Jove orders Aeneas to abandon Carthage and follow his true destiny. The brokenhearted Dido commits suicide by burning herself on a pyre, and this incident is used to foreshadow the later enmity between Rome and Carthage that resulted in the three Punic Wars. Aeneas and the Trojans land at Cumae in Italy, where Aeneas consults Apollo’s priestess, the Sibyl, who conducts him on a visit to the Underworld. Here he meets the shade of his father, who shows him the glorious future of the Roman nation he is to found. This is the turning point of the poem, after which Aeneas never turns from his destined path. The Trojans set sail from Cumae and arrive in Latium, where Aeneas is promised the hand of King Latinus’s daughter, Lavinia. This angers Turnus, a rival suitor and leader of the Rutilians, who declares war on Aeneas and Latinus. They make an alliance with Evander, who is king of Pallanteum, the future site of Rome itself. Ultimately the war is decided by single combat between Aeneas and Turnus, in which Aeneas, relentlessly pursuing his divine destiny, kills Turnus without mercy.

The influence of Virgil’s Aeneid on Dante is immeasurable. Clearly Dante sought in his COMEDY to recover the lost glory of Latin literature through composing a poem of the epic scale of Virgil’s. Indeed the fact that he has Virgil call the Aeneid “my high tragedy” (INFERNO 20, l. 113) suggests a deliberate parallel with Dante’s own Comedy. Further it was Virgil’s conviction in the justice and legitimacy of the Roman mission that inspired Dante’s own faith in the Imperial role of Rome and the need for a secular world emperor to balance the power of the papacy—a conviction that led ultimately to the composition of DE MONARCHIA but that saw its first expression in the CONVIVIO (Book 4). Finally, it was no doubt the figure of Aeneas himself—the wanderer cut off forever from the city of his birth—that caught Dante’s sympathy, seeing in Aeneas an image of his own exile. The wandering pilgrim on a divine quest became the theme of Dante’s own great work, and the setting—the three realms of the afterlife— was undoubtedly suggested by Book 6 of the Aeneid, in which Aeneas visits the underworld and meets figures from his own life and experiences. Dante quotes from or alludes to the Aeneid more than 40 times in his works, mainly in the Comedy. Of course Aeneas, Dido, and other characters appear in circles of the Inferno. But nearly every allusion to classical mythology in Dante’s poem, from the names of the rivers of Hell to the Furies and Harpies, to the infernal guardians Cerberus and Charon, all have their ultimate source in Virgil’s poem. Perhaps Dante’s most inspired use of the Aeneid occurs in Canto 13 of the Inferno, where he describes the Wood of Suicides. The souls of the suicides, having thrown away the bodies God gave them, in this circle inhabit trees. It is a direct allusion, as Virgil himself makes clear in 13, ll. 47–48, to Book 3.22–43 of the Aeneid, in which Aeneas sees blood pour from the broken branch of a shrub and hears the voice of his dead comrade Polydorus. Dante’s most direct tribute to Virgil’s poem occurs as the pilgrim parts from his guide near the end of the PURGATORIO (Canto 30, l. 21). Here at the arrival of Beatrice’s chariot in the earthly paradise the souls throw flowers her way, shouting, “Manibus, O, date lilia plenis” (“Oh give us lilies with full hands”), a line from the Aeneid (6.883).

Alberigo, Friar   377

Charon and the River Acheron, from Canto 3 of the Inferno, by Gustave Doré. From Dante’s Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M. A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and Illustrated with the Designs of M. Gustave Doré, New York: P. F. Collier, 1885.

When Dante first sets eyes on Beatrice a few lines later, he speaks a line about feeling heat from an ancient flame (l. 48). The line is taken directly from a speech of Dido’s concerning her passion for Aeneas that she thought she no longer felt (Aeneid 4.23). But when Dante turns to Virgil after speaking this line, Virgil has disappeared. The quoted lines are a final homage to Virgil and to the poem that inspired Dante’s. Alberigo, Friar  (Fra Alberigo)  (before 1250–after 1300)  Alberigo di Ugolino, a native of Faenza, was a member of the Manfredi, a powerful Guelph family who controlled Faenza. Sometime before 1267 Alberigo joined the Order of the Cavalieri de Beata Santa Maria, commonly known as the “Jovial Friars” because of their comparatively loose rule, which allowed them to marry and live in their own homes. The order had been founded in 1261 in

Bologna, its express purpose, ironically, to maintain peace among the political factions of Italy. In about 1284 Alberigo’s near-kinsman Manfred, aiming to have sole lordship of Faenza, instigated a plot against Alberigo. Alberigo confronted the would-be usurper, and Manfred struck the friar in the ensuing argument. Apparently in the interest of peace Alberigo forgave Manfred’s insult, excusing him for being young and impetuous, and the two were formally reconciled. In May 1285 Alberigo invited Manfred and his eldest son, Alberghetto, to dinner as a gesture of peace and goodwill. When the meal was over and it was time for the dessert course, Alberigo called, “Bring in the fruit.” This was a prearranged signal, at which assassins who had been hidden behind the tapestries in the room rushed out and murdered Manfred and his son. The story of the murder was so well known that “Friar Alberigo’s bad fruit” grew to be a proverbial saying in Italy. Dante places Friar Alberigo in the ninth circle of Hell, the icy lake of Cocytus where traitors are punished by being forever frozen in the ice. Dante and Virgil find Friar Alberigo in Tolomea, the section reserved for those who betray their guests (Inferno 33, ll. 109–150). The pilgrims see one whose head is lifted above the ice, and whose own tears have frozen shut his eyes. The damned soul pleads with the two pilgrims to break the icy crust from his eyes so that he might at least have the release of tears, and Dante agrees to do so if the condemned shade will reveal his identity. At this Alberigo identifies himself, at which Dante responds in surprise, “Are you already dead?” (l. 121). As far as Dante knows, Alberigo is still alive on earth at the time of his pilgrimage. At this point Alberigo reveals the special power of Hell’s ninth circle: The souls of sinners so evil as to betray family and guests drop immediately into the pit of Cocytus, and their bodies on earth are taken over by demons. This has happened to Alberigo’s own body, he tells Dante, as well as that of another traitor, Branca d’Oria of Genoa (who killed his father-in-law at dinner), who lies frozen a short way off. In the end Alberigo asks Dante to fulfill his promise and remove the ice from his eyes, but the pilgrim breaks his promise and leaves

378 Alberti, Alessandro and Napoleone degli without doing so, declaring that betraying the damned Alberigo was in fact a virtuous act. Alberti, Alessandro and Napoleone degli (d. ca. 1285) Alessandro and Napoleone degli Alberti were brothers, the sons of Count Alberto of Mangone, who owned a part of the Bisenzio River valley in TUSCANY, not far from FLORENCE. Dante places the Alberti, who killed each other sometime between 1282 and 1286, in Caïna, the first round of the frozen lake of Cocytus at the bottom of Hell. Here the two are eternally frozen together in the ice but continue to butt their heads together in fury (Canto 32, ll. 40–57). According to early commentators, the two brothers quarreled constantly. Part of their animosity was due to political differences—Alessandro was a GUELPH while Napoleone (following his family tradition) was a GHIBELLINE. But the chief motivation for their mutual hatred was personal: When their father, Alberto, died, he left the younger son, Alessandro, 90 percent of his property, including the family castle in the Bisenzio valley. The remainder of the estate went to Napoleone, but the unappeased elder son unlawfully seized control of the castle for himself. The dispute over the inheritance ultimately led to the brothers’ mutual destruction. Nor did the family feud end with the brothers’ deaths. Alessandro’s son eventually avenged his father’s death by killing Orso, the son of Napoleone. Dante places Count Orso in Ante-Purgatory (PURGATORIO, Canto 6, l. 19), among the late repentant who died by violence. Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great) (ca. 1193– 1280) Albertus Magnus, whom Dante refers to as Albert of Cologne, was also known as “Doctor Universalis” because of his enormous and varied learning, which encompassed all branches of medieval knowledge. He was the eldest son of a noble family and was born in Swabia, in the town of Lauingen on the Danube. He studied at the University of Padua and it was there, in 1223, that he joined the Dominican order, having been inspired by the teachings of the head of the order, Jordan of Saxony. He subsequently studied and taught at Padua, Bologna, and Cologne, where he stayed for

several years in the Dominican priory. He went on to teach at Regensburg, Freiburg, Strasbourg, and Hildesheim, and finally, in about 1241, was sent to the convent of Saint-Jacques at the University of Paris. It was in Paris that he became familiar with the Greek texts of ARISTOTLE and their Arabic commentaries that were just becoming available in the West. Albert was to become instrumental in spreading this new learning throughout Europe and dealing with its implications for Christian theology. It was also in Paris that Albert first encountered his most important student, SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS. Aquinas traveled to Paris while Albert was teaching there and became his devoted disciple. In 1248 Aquinas traveled with Albert back to Cologne to set up the Studium Generale, a Dominican university. Here Albert lectured and Aquinas acted as master of students until returning to Paris in 1252. In 1254 Albert was named provincial of the Dominican province of Germany, an administrative post he held for three years until, wishing to devote more time to his scholarly pursuits, he resigned and returned to Cologne in 1257. In 1260 Albert was appointed bishop of Regensburg, but after two years he resigned this post as well and went back to Cologne. In 1274 Pope Gregory X invited Albert to take part in the Second Council of Lyon, where the important ecclesiasts of the day discussed matters of concern to the church, both practical and theoretical. Aquinas, also invited to the council, died en route, and soon after his death, a movement began in the church to condemn many of Aquinas’s teachings. Since a number of those teachings paralleled Albert’s own, the now aged Albert traveled in 1277 to Paris, where he made an articulate defense of Aquinas’s positions. Soon after, however, Albert’s health began to decline, and he died in Cologne on November 15, 1280. In 1931 Albertus Magnus was proclaimed a saint and a holy doctor of the Catholic Church. Albert was a prolific writer, his collected works extending over 21 volumes. He wrote a number of scriptural commentaries and three commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a standard university text. Most important he wrote six volumes of commentaries on Aristotle, which include para-

Alexander the Great phrases and illustrative supplements to every one of Aristotle’s works. He was the first scholar in Latin Christendom to make the complete corpus of Aristotle’s works available to the West. In his Summa theologiae Albert (like Aquinas after him) attempted to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology, finding that he also needed to include a chapter on “the errors of Aristotle.” Albert also wrote a Summa de creaturis and various treatises on medieval sciences, including one on alchemy. Dante was particularly interested in Albert’s scientific thought and considers a number of his ideas throughout the CONVIVIO, including Albert’s theories about the equator, comets, the distribution of the sun’s light, the Milky Way, and the structure of the heavens. In the DIVINE COMEDY Dante places Albert in the sphere of the sun in Paradise, the Heaven of great thinkers (PARADISO 10, ll. 97–99). As Dante and Beatrice enter the fourth sphere, they are surrounded by a circle of 12 singing souls, each so bright that it can be seen against the sun itself. One of the spirits, Thomas Aquinas, steps forth and introduces the members of the circle, each known for his great learning. These include Bede, ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS, and Solomon; the first to be mentioned is Aquinas’s “master and brother,” Albertus Magnus. Aldobrandesco, Omberto (d. 1259) Omberto Aldobrandesco was the second son of the powerful Guglielmo Aldobrandesco, count of Santafiora and the dominant baron of the Sienese Maremma, his family owning several fortified castles in the area. In the mid-13th century the Aldobrandeschi family was involved in a long-standing conflict with the city of Siena, so that Guglielmo abandoned the traditional GHIBELLINE partisanship of his family and joined with the GUELPHs of FLORENCE to oppose Ghibelline Siena. His name was included in a 1254 treaty between Siena and Florence. Guglielmo was dead by 1256. His son, Omberto, was lord of the castle of Camagnatico and was by all accounts an arrogant man inordinately proud of his family heritage. In 1259 Siena sent a military force against Omberto’s castle. According to some sources Sienese operatives were able to get inside the Aldobrandeschi

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fortress and murder Omberto, strangling him while he slept. But other sources claim that the besieged Omberto, badly outnumbered, led his troops in a desperate charge into the thick of Sienese forces, killing many of them before finally dying in the midst of the battle. This latter version is the story Dante seems to accept. Dante places Omberto in the first terrace of Purgatory, among those souls purging themselves of pride (Canto 11, ll. 49–72). Omberto, weighed down by a large humbling load, is Dante’s example of pride in family. The spirit of Omberto implies that his own arrogance led to his downfall (perhaps, in his pride, underestimating the strength of the enemy opposing him at Camagnatico). In any case his death destroyed the power of the Aldobrandeschi in the Maremma, and the Sienese took control of the region. Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.E.) The historical Alexander was the son of Philip II of Macedon and became king at the age of 20 after the murder of his father. He embarked on a series of conquests two years later that eventually made him lord of the largest empire the world had yet seen. He invaded the Persian Empire in 334 B.C.E., conquered Egypt (where he founded the city of Alexandria), and in 331 trounced the Persians at the Battle of Arbela after capturing Emperor Darius’s family. He married Darius’s daughter but burned the Persian capitol of Persepolis to the ground. From there he attacked India, crushing the army of Porus, prince of northern India, in 326. But Alexander died in Babylon of a fever in 326 B.C.E., having subjugated virtually the whole known world. He was 32. Dante would have known Alexander through historical texts such as the history written by LUCAN (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS) and PAULUS OROSIUS’s Historia adversus paganos, but he also would have been aware of a tradition of medieval romances about Alexander stemming ultimately from a third-century Greek source by a writer named Callisthenes. Beginning in the 12th century with the French Roman d’Alexandre by Lambert le Tort and Alexandre de Bernay, as well as Alberic de Pisonçon’s 12th-century Provençal version of

380 Alighiero di Bellincione d’Alighiero the same story and the German Alexanderlied, these romances treat Alexander as a paragon of chivalry. In them he is a central romance figure like Charlemagne and King Arthur, and, like them, one of the “Nine Worthies of the World.” It may have been this romance tradition that influenced Dante to hold up Alexander as the model of liberality in his CONVIVIO (4.11.14). In DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA (2.6.2) Dante mentions Alexander as a contemporary of ARISTOTLE, doubtlessly remembering the historical detail that Aristotle was Alexander’s tutor when the conqueror was a youth. In DE MONARCHIA (2.8.8) Dante extols Alexander for being than any other monarch in history like the ideal of a universal monarch (his chief goal in De monarchia). In the text he repeats a story, derived from an unknown source, that Alexander had sent emissaries to Rome to demand its surrender but had died (in Egypt, as Dante mistakenly claims) before receiving the Romans’ answer. But it is the romance Alexander whom Dante admires in these texts. In the INFERNO Dante places Alexander in the first round of circle seven, the violent against neighbors, where (with Attila the Hun and other tyrants) he is submerged up to his eyebrows in a boiling river of blood (Inferno 12, l. 107). Clearly Dante is following his historical sources here—Orosius had characterized Alexander as a brutal beast, and Lucan had called him the bane of the world. Some scholars have found it difficult to believe that Dante would praise Alexander so highly in one text and condemn him so strongly in another (even claiming that the Alexander in the Inferno is not Alexander the Great at all but rather Alexander of Pherae, a tyrant from Thessalonia). But if the figure in Canto 12 is not Alexander the Great, then why does he not appear elsewhere, as in Limbo with heroes like GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR, Hector, and Aeneas? Alexander is conspicuously absent from this group. But the difference between romance ideal and historical reality may help explain the difficulty, which might also be attributed to Dante’s theological purposes in the Inferno. Alighiero di Bellincione d’Alighiero (Allighiero II) (ca. 1240–ca. 1283) Very little is known about Dante’s father, who was a member of a Floren-

tine family of minor nobility. Born Alighiero di Bellincione d’Alighiero, he is generally known as Alighiero II, since Alighiero was also the name of his grandfather. His father, Bellincione, a member of the GUELPH political party, was a relatively active figure in local Florentine politics in the 1250s, but Alighiero II does not appear to have been important enough politically to have been exiled after the GHIBELLINE victory in 1260. Alighiero owned property in FLORENCE and in the surrounding countryside and supported his family with income from those properties and through lending money. He was married to a woman from a Ghibelline family known as BELLA (GABRIELLA DEGLI ABATI). She gave birth to their eldest son, Dante, in May 1265, as well as a daughter a few years later and died in 1272. Alighiero married a second wife, Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi, in 1277, about the same time he betrothed his 11-yearold son, Dante, to GEMMA (di Manetto) DONATI, the 10-year-old daughter of one of his neighbors. Alighiero and Lapa were to have three more children: a son named Francesco (to whom Dante was to remain close for the rest of his life) and two daughters, one of whom was called Tana. Alighiero died in about 1283, leaving Dante to care for his family. Dante began by selling off credits owned by his father and generally relied on the properties Alighiero left to support the household. Dante never mentions his father in any of his works, so that speculation has arisen about whether the relationship between the two was close. It is certainly true that when Dante spoke with pride about his noble heritage, it was his great-greatgrandfather, CACCIAGUIDA, to whom he referred, and never his father. allegory Perhaps the most pervasive literary form of the European Middle Ages, allegory is usually defined as a narrative or dramatic text whose characters, setting, and action denote concepts beyond the literal surface meaning of the text itself. In allegory the author’s chief intent is to portray abstract ideas in a concrete form, so that a character named Reason who argues with another character in the text named Will may be a concrete way of representing the interior thought process of a

Anastasius II, Pope 381 human being considering whether to commit an act because he wants to do it or avoid it because it might not be the smart thing to do. Allegory differs from symbolism, where the writer’s chief interest is the literal level of the narrative, but where some object or character within the story—a scarlet letter, for instance—takes on a significance beyond its use in the narrative. Medieval poetry abounds in allegory, beginning with the Roman poet Prudentius’s significant fourth-century Psychomachia, a narrative of a battle between personified virtues and vices within the human soul. Popular allegories in the High Middle Ages often take the form of dream vision poems— such as the enormously influential 13th-century French Roman de la Rose or the highly complex 14th-century English Piers Plowman—in which the poem’s speaker falls asleep and has a dream filled with personified abstractions. Morality plays, such as Everyman (in which a personified Death compels the character Everyman to go on a journey with him), became a particularly popular allegorical genre in the late Middle Ages. In part the composition of allegorical literary texts was affected by medieval approaches to interpreting scriptural texts. Prompted no doubt by some of Saint Paul’s own readings, biblical commentators in the early Middle Ages habitually read Old Testament events as foreshadowing, or prefiguring, those of the New Testament, so that, for example, Jonah’s three days in the belly of the great fish were read as foreshadowing Christ’s three days in the tomb. In the fourth century SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO advanced a fourfold method of interpreting the Scriptures that had first been outlined by John Cassian. According to this system a passage of Scripture might be read on four levels: a literal or historical level, according to which the events were taken as historical fact; a “typological” level, in which Old Testament events foreshadowed New Testament ones; a “tropological” level, wherein the events in the text were seen as applying to the individual moral lives of readers; and finally an “anagogical” level, by which the details of the narrative were connected with the fate of the human soul in the afterlife. The medieval writer most directly influenced by this fourfold interpretive system was Dante. In a

letter written in about 1319 to one of his powerful patrons, CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA of VERONA, Dante asserted that one should read his COMEDY in the same manner that the Scriptures were interpreted: on a literal level as well as three separate allegorical senses. Thus any character in the Comedy may have several significations. Dante’s mentor Virgil, for example, is both the classical Roman poet and an allegorical figure of human Reason, while the divine lady Beatrice is not only the historical Florentine beauty whom Dante loved, but also a figure of divine love. Thus Virgil can guide Dante only through Hell and Purgatory, while Beatrice must guide him through Heaven—only God’s love can lead us to Heaven after human reason has reached its limits. Individual souls encountered on the journey through the afterlife similarly have several senses. BERTRAN DE BORN, for example, among the “sowers of discord” in INFERNO 28, is first of all the famous troubadour poet. Allegorically he also becomes a symbol of the sin itself: The severed head he carries embodies the political division he caused. Furthermore the reader comes to realize in the course of the Inferno that the sinners are in Hell precisely what they were on earth: They still engage in the sins that have condemned them to this place for, as the contrapasso or “eye for an eye” justice reveals, the sin itself is its own punishment. On the moral level of allegory sin and Hell are identical—thus to sin in life is to be in Hell, separated from God. Thus as Dante himself suggests in his “Letter to Can Grande,” an allegorical habit of reading (which would have been second nature to most of Dante’s readers) is essential to a full understanding of the Divine Comedy. Anastasius II, Pope Anastasius II was born in Rome to a citizen named Fortunatus. He became pope on November 16, 498. The farthest-reaching achievement of his papacy was the conversion of Clovis, king of the Franks, on Christmas Day, 496— the significance of which was hardly dreamed of at the time. But Anastasius ascended the papal throne in the midst of the Acacian schism between the Eastern (Greek) and Western (Roman) Churches: The schism occurred after the Eastern Church

382 Angiolieri, Cecco accepted the heresy of Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople (d. 488), who denied the divine birth of Christ and held that Jesus was born of a mortal father in the usual way. The heresy had already caused serious division before Anastasius became pope. The Byzantine emperor, whose name ironically was also Anastasius (emperor 491–518), had been converted to the Acacian heresy by Photinus, a deacon of the Greek Church in Thessalonica. Pope Anastasius’s penultimate predecessor, Felix III, had excommunicated Emperor Anastasius, and the pope’s immediate predecessor, Gelasius I, adamantly refused any compromise with Constantinople. Pope Anastasius, recognizing the disintegrating unity of Christendom, sought ways to reconcile the churches. He sent legates to the emperor to seek avenues of reconciliation. Meanwhile the emperor had met with Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who was seeking Imperial approval to become king of Italy. Emperor Anastasius granted approval, if the Roman Church would tolerate Acacianism. Pope Anastasius died during the controversy within the Roman Church over this proposal, but many blamed him for his perceived soft stance toward what they considered a damnable heresy and interpreted his death as God’s judgment on him. Such criticism is preserved in later medieval sources, such as the Liber pontificalis (Book of popes), a collection of biographies of early popes. Medieval writers generally focused specifically on the story that Pope Anastasius allowed Deacon Photinus to take communion, thereby countenancing the Acacian heresy that Photinus championed. It is possible, however, that early biographers were confusing Pope Anastasius with Emperor Anastasius. In any case some later medieval sources describe a horrible death for Anastasius, asserting that when he was relieving himself, his insides, “by God’s will,” left his body from below—a sign of God’s judgment on him as a heretic. These were the sources that Dante would have known. In Canto 11 of the INFERNO (ll. 8–9) Dante and Virgil are moving through circle six, where heretics are punished by lying in tombs of red-hot iron. They pass by one tomb that bears an inscription, identifying the soul within as that of Anastasius, who was “led astray by Photinus.”

Angiolieri, Cecco (ca. 1260–ca. 1313) Cecco Angiolieri may be best known to modern readers through three SONNETs that he addressed to Dante—the first of these criticizes the final poem of Dante’s VITA NUOVA, the second argues with Dante for suggesting that Cecco should not write sonnets to the lowborn “lady” he has chosen, and the third addresses Dante’s exile and suggests that his lot is similar to the impoverished Cecco’s. Although Cecco wrote some poems influenced by the Sicilian love poetry of people such as GIACOMO DA LENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINI, “THE NOTARY”) and seems to have been familiar with the exalted version of love that characterized the DOLCE STIL NOVO (sweet new style) of Dante and GUIDO CAVALCANTI, Cecco for the most part burlesques this tradition. In most of his 128 extant sonnets Cecco creates a persona characterized by his love of brawling, carousing, and consorting with loose women. Cecco’s most popular sonnets present a humorous but realistic picture of everyday life, in which he complains about his poverty and his wealthy parents, who will not support him. The angelic lady of the stilnovist lyrics is replaced by a cobbler’s daughter named Becchina, with whom he quarrels endlessly. While readers have tended to interpret these poems autobiographically, recent scholars have shown the clear influence of earlier Latin goliardic verse on Cecco and suggest that his persona may owe a great deal to that of the traditional golias (or wandering scholar). Cecco was born in Siena, perhaps—as his persona asserts—to wealthy parents. In 1289 he may have fought (as Dante did) in the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO, where he would have been among the Sienese troops who supported the Florentine GUELPHs against the Aretine GHIBELLINEs. He seems later to have been a member of the court of Cardinal Riccardo Petroni in Rome. Two other facts are known about Cecco’s life: First, in 1291 he was acquitted of a criminal assault charge; second, upon his death in 1313 his five sons each renounced their inheritance, because it would have made them responsible for the considerable debts that Cecco left. These facts only serve to underscore Cecco’s reputation for profligate living suggested by his sonnets—a reputation so persistent that GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO was to play upon it in

Antaeus the Decameron, where the fourth story of the ninth day depicts Cecco Angiolieri gambling away all his money (as well as his horse and his shirt). Anselm of Canterbury, Saint (ca. 1033–1109) One of the most influential theologians and philosophers of the high Middle Ages, Saint Anselm is sometimes referred to as the first of the Scholastics, that is, the first to apply classical philosophical arguments to Christian theology. For Dante he was important enough to place among the doctors of the church in the sphere of the sun, where he is introduced by SAINT BONAVENTURE (PARADISO 12, l. 137). Anselm was born in Piedmont and when he was about 16 years old entered the monastery at Bec in Normandy. He became a monk in 1060 and was prior of the monastery by 1063. In 1078 he was abbot of Bec, and he began a successful monastic school there. By this time the Normans had conquered England, and in 1093 Anselm was appointed archbishop of Canterbury. In that position he ran afoul of King William II over whether his primary loyalty should lie with the pope or the Crown and fled England in 1097. In 1098 he took a leading role at the Council of Bafri, seeking reconciliation between the Eastern and Western Churches. When William died in 1100, the new king, Henry I, asked Anselm to return to England, but Anselm’s refusal to take an oath of allegiance led to further exile. After agreeing to a compromise oath by which he would swear allegiance to Henry in secular matters, Anselm was allowed to return to Canterbury, where he died in 1109. Anselm’s reputation, however, rests chiefly on his writings. One of the best known of his texts was the treatise Cur deus homo (“Why God Became a Man”). It was written during his exile in 1098, and in it Anselm puts forward a new theory of the atonement. Anselm rejects the earlier “devil’s rights” theory, which argued that the devil had a claim to human souls because of the fall and Christ’s death paid that debt. Anselm refused to believe that the devil had any rights but spoke instead of the satisfaction of justice: Man was required to make satisfaction for having broken God’s law, but man was not able to pay the price. Only God himself could make satisfactory payment

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and so purely out of love did so in the form of a human being. In Canto 7 of the PARADISO Beatrice summarizes Anselm’s atonement argument for the pilgrim Dante. Even better known was Anselm’s Proslogion, written when he was at Bec. In this text he makes his famous “ontological argument” for the existence of God: I have an idea of “that, than which nothing greater can be conceived,” the argument begins. It is a logical contradiction to suggest that this being does not exist in reality, since then something greater could be conceived. Although the argument has been debated ever since Anselm made it, it is not likely to win a great number of converts to Christianity. Anselm himself called his method “faith seeking understanding”: One should not use reason to decide what to believe, according to Anselm, but rather should first have faith and then find rational justification for that faith. Anselm displays a good knowledge of classical thinkers such as ARISTOTLE and ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS and a close familiarity with church fathers, especially SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (Anselm was sometimes called Augustine redivivus—i.e., “Augustine recycled”). He was the ultimate inspiration for thinkers such as Peter Lombard, ALBERTUS MAGNUS, and SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS—all of whom appear, with Anselm, among the circles of the wise in Dante’s sphere of the Sun in the Paradiso. Antaeus In classical mythology the giant Antaeus was the son of Neptune and of Gaea, the earth. According to legend Antaeus lived in the deserts of Libya, where he dwelled in a cave and hunted lions in the valley of Bagrades—the same valley where Scipio would later defeat Hannibal in the Punic Wars. Antaeus lived in a cave and ate the meat of the lions he hunted. He had sworn to construct a temple to his father, Neptune, out of human skulls and therefore challenged every stranger who passed his way to a wrestling match. He invariably defeated his enemy and killed him, subsequently collecting the dead man’s skull. Antaeus made a fatal error when he challenged Hercules, who was passing through Libya on his way to the Garden of the Hesperides. Hercules was

384 Arbia able to throw the giant to the ground three times, but each time Antaeus sprang up stronger than ever. It was then that Hercules realized the secret of Antaeus’s strength: As long as he was in contact with his mother, the earth, the giant was invincible. Hercules was able to defeat Antaeus by holding him aloft, where the giant could not touch the earth, and crushing him to death as he held him. Dante, who took the story of Antaeus chiefly from LUCAN’s (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS’s) Pharsalia (IV, 593–660), makes the giant one of the guardians of the ninth circle of Hell (INFERNO 31, ll. 112–145). Unlike the other giants who watch this circle, Antaeus is unchained, presumably since he did not take part in the rebellion of the Titans against the gods—though while addressing the giant Virgil suggests, in an estimation based on Lucan, that had Antaeus joined the Titans’ side, the gods might have been defeated (31, ll. 119–120). In response to Virgil’s flattery and the suggestion that the living poet Dante may spread Antaeus’s fame throughout the world, the giant is persuaded to lift the poets down from the eighth circle to the icy floor of Cocytus at the bottom of Hell. Arbia The Arbia is a stream in TUSCANY that flows just south of Siena and empties into the Ombrone River at the town of Buonconvaento. It is mentioned by Dante in Canto 10, line 86, of the INFERNO, where he speaks of a slaughter that made the waters of the Arbia run red with blood. He is referring to a fierce battle between Florentine GUELPHs and GHIBELLINEs that took place on the hill of Montaperti, on the left bank of the Arbia, on September 4, 1260. Dante’s allusion to the battle is in the context of his conversation with the great Ghibelline captain FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI, one of the chief sinners among the heretics. Farinata, who had been banished from FLORENCE in 1258, had assembled a large military force, with the aid of the Manfredi of Siena. With this help he was able to crush the Guelphs at Montaperti. Arezzo The city of Arezzo, in southeastern TUSabout midway between FLORENCE and Perugia, was Florence’s bitter enemy in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. In a rivalry that formed part of CANY

the vicious internecine Italian struggle between the GUELPHs and the GHIBELLINEs, the staunchly Ghibelline Arezzo repulsed all attempts by the powerful Guelph Florentines to annex their city until ultimately falling under Florentine hegemony in 1336. When the Ghibellines first gained power of Arezzo in 1256, they exiled the leading Guelphs, including the influential Tuscan poet GUITTONE D’AREZZO. In 1287 under the leadership of BUONCONTE DA MONTEFELTRO (whom Dante places among the late repentant in Canto 5 of the PURGATORIO), all Guelphs were expelled from Arezzo, an act that sparked hostilities with Florence. In 1289 the Florentines gained a decisive victory over the Aretines in the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO, where Buonconte fell, a battle in which Dante took part as a member of the Florentine cavalry. Dante describes the battle in the opening lines of Canto 22 of the INFERNO. Dante mentions the city in a few other places. The alchemist Griffolino claims it as his home in Canto 29 of the Inferno (l. 109); in the PURGATORIO (14.46–48) GUIDO DEL DUCA, in describing the course of the river ARNO, refers to the Aretines as “small snarling curs” that the river disdainfully turns its course from. Dante also mentions the Aretine dialect in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA (1.10.9), where he distinguishes it from the language of the Sienese but condemns it for poetic use along with the other Tuscan dialects. Argenti degli Adimari, Filippo (late 13th century) Filippo “Argenti” was a Florentine and a member of the Cavicciuli branch of the Adimari, a strongly partisan family of Black GUELPHs and thus bitter political enemies of Dante. Filippo’s brother reportedly received Dante’s goods when the poet was exiled from FLORENCE in 1302. Filippo seems to have been famous for his irascible nature and according to one legend had once offended Dante by slapping him. Filippo’s family was not of the aristocracy, but he was quite wealthy and according to GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO was given his nickname Argenti (silver) because he shod his horse with silver as a way of flaunting his wealth. Boccaccio describes Filippo as a large, muscular man of great strength and savage temperament. The eighth story of the ninth day of Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1353) tells a story of Filippo’s legendary

Aristotle

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Virgil repelling Filippo Argenti from the boat of Phlegyas, from Canto 8 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

temper: The Florentine CIACCO, tricked by a certain Biondello, gets his revenge by sending a messenger in Biondello’s name to insult Filippo. Ciacco then tells Biondello that Filippo wants to see him, and when Filippo sees Biondello, he beats him mercilessly. Not surprisingly Dante places Filippo in the fifth circle of Hell, among the wrathful and sullen in the marsh of the Styx. In Canto 8 (ll. 31ff.) Virgil and Dante are crossing the Styx by boat. A muddy figure emerges and challenges the pilgrims, demanding to know who it is who enters alive into Hell. Dante responds that he has not come to stay, then asks who the speaker is. The muddy soul answers evasively that he is “one who weeps,” but Dante, having recognized him, speaks scornfully to him and says he hopes Filippo will weep there forever. Filippo then attacks the boat but is pushed away by Virgil, who approves of Dante’s anger. When Dante expresses the desire to see Filippo dunked

in the slime of the marsh, he gets his wish, as other souls in the river attack Filippo, and he is left impotently biting himself in frustrated ire. Dante’s treatment of Filippo at this point has raised a number of questions among commentators. Some think Dante was simply using this chance to attack the Adimari family through Filippo. Others suggest that, since Virgil approves of Dante’s wrath, this is a mark of the pilgrim Dante’s maturing spiritual vision: Instead of sympathizing with the damned souls as he had to this point, he now shows a righteous anger toward the sin they represent. While this is probably true, it is probably no accident that Dante chose a member of the Black faction on whom to demonstrate that righteous anger. Aristotle (384 B.C.E.–322 B.C.E.) Aristotle was, for Dante and the other scholars of the later Middle Ages, the most important of classical thinkers,

386 Arnaut Daniel often referred to as simply “the Philosopher.” He had been born in the region of Chalcidice in Macedonia, in a town called Stagira (thus he is sometimes referred to as “the Stagirite”). He traveled to Athens in 367 to study with PLATO, who recognized his talent and dubbed him “the intellect” of his Academy. When Plato died in 347 and Aristotle was not chosen to succeed him, he returned to Macedonia, where for seven years he was the tutor of the young prince ALEXANDER THE GREAT, as he was soon known. After Alexander’s ascension to the Macedonian throne Aristotle returned to Athens in 335 and founded his own school, the Lyceum, which rivaled the Platonic Academy. It was during his time at the Lyceum that Aristotle composed the numerous philosophical texts upon which his subsequent reputation was to rest. He taught at his new school for 13 years, until the death of Alexander in 323. At that point the pro-Macedonian government of Athens was deposed, and the new government was suspicious of anyone with Macedonian connections. Charges of impiety were brought against Aristotle (as they had been, three-quarters of a century earlier, against Socrates), and at that point he fled the city, moving to the city of Chalcis in Euboea. He was to live there only briefly before, suffering from a stomach ailment, he died in 322 at the age of 63. In the Latin West there was little direct knowledge of Aristotle’s works until the 12th century, when, largely through the intermediary of Arabic translations and commentaries, he began to be translated and read in Western Europe again. Dante speaks of both “New” and “Old” translations of Aristotle in the CONVIVIO (2.14.7), indicating that he was aware of the substantive differences between the earlier Latin translations, made from Arabic versions, and the more recent translations, made directly from original Greek texts. Dante’s use of Aristotle was extensive: He quotes from the philosopher more than any other writer or text with the exception of the Bible—some 150 times, most often from the Physics, the Metaphysics, and the Nicomachean Ethics. Of course in addition Dante was influenced considerably by SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, who was himself immersed in Aristote-

lian thought. Thus Aristotle’s influence on Dante, both direct and indirect, may be greater than that of any other thinker. This is most noteworthy in the Convivio, where Aristotle is referred to more than 50 times by name and 40 more times as “the Philosopher.” In particular Dante cites Aristotle as the chief authority on the nature of the soul (Convivio 3.6.11), on the operation of the intellect (3.15.11), on the definition of knowledge (4.12.12) and of moral virtue (4.17.1–7), on man as the most perfect of all animals (2.8.10), and on nature itself (4.9.2). Aristotle is also mentioned twice in the VITA NUOVA, and twice in DE MONARCHIA (2.5.23 and 2.7.3) as the ultimate authority on logic. In his COMMEDIA Dante places Aristotle in Limbo, the first circle of Hell, where virtuous pagans are housed in the highest state that can be achieved by human reason unaided by faith. He appears in the INFERNO, Canto 4, line 131, where he is the acknowledged master of philosophy, flanked by the admiring Plato and Socrates, who defer to his preeminence. He is mentioned once more by name in the PURGATORIO (Canto 3, l. 43), where Virgil includes him among the great thinkers of antiquity who had been unable to see beyond the limits of philosophical reason to the truth of divine revelation, and so were not able to enter the realm of the saved. Arnaut Daniel (Arnaud) (ca. 1150–ca. 1200) The troubadour poet whom Dante most admired, Arnaut Daniel was best known for his poems in the complex trobar clus style, which valued intricate rhymes and stanza forms. For example Arnaut is credited with the invention of the sestina, a poem consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, plus a three-line closing stanza called a congedo. Each stanza uses the same six rhyme words so that the rhyme word of the first line in each stanza repeats the rhyme of the last word in the previous stanza. All six rhyme words are repeated in the congedo, half as internal rhymes. Some of Arnaut’s other rhyme schemes are even more complex, and he utilizes assonance and alliteration as well. The technical virtuosity of Arnaut’s 18 extant lyrics is unsurpassed in medieval lyric poetry.

Arno Although some of Arnaut’s lyrics are somewhat bawdy, his chief theme is love, and its ennobling aspects. For Arnaut love inspires his art, and love prompts him to strive for moral virtue. It was a familiar theme in troubadour poetry, and one that struck a responsive chord in Dante, who pushes the theme to its ultimate conclusion in his characterization of Beatrice in the COMEDY. A vida, or early life of the poet, says that Arnaut was born in the Aquitaine, in a town called Ribérac on the Dordogne River. He was probably acquainted with contemporary fellow troubadours GIRAUT DE BORNELH and BERTRAN DE BORN, who were from the same general vicinity. Like them and many other troubadours did, Arnaut traveled among various courts. He is believed at one point to have been in the retinue of England’s Richard I the Lionheart. He also professes to have attended the 1180 coronation of King Philippe-Auguste of France. It is likely that he visited courts in Spain and possibly Italy as well. Dante considered Arnaut the greatest of the troubadours, and he refers to him at least six times in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA. But Dante’s greatest

The Arno River in Florence. (Photo by Gerardo Bruno)

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tribute to Arnaut occurs in Canto 26 of the PURGATORIO. Here in the terrace of the lustful, where the spirits are being purified by fire, Dante speaks with the great Italian love poet GUIDO GUINIZELLI. But when Dante expresses his admiration for Guido, Guido responds modestly by referring Dante to another of the flames nearby: It is the soul of Arnaut Daniel, whom Guido refers to as miglior fabbro del parlar materno (the better craftsman in the mother tongue), a phrase implying Dante’s respect for Arnaut as a “craftsman” or technician of poetry. The display of respect continues as Canto 26 ends with Arnaut’s three-stanza speech, the only place in the Comedy where a character is allowed to speak a vernacular language other than Italian. Arnaut, the great vernacular poet in the Occitan language, speaks that language in the Purgatorio. Arno The Arno is the longest river in TUSCANY. Its source is in Mount Falterona in the Apennine Mountains, from which it flows southeast through the Casentino Valley toward the city of AREZZO. It passes within about four miles of Arezzo but makes a sharp turn to the northwest. It flows by the Chianti

388 Augustine of Hippo, Saint hills to the south, is joined by a tributary called the Sieve, then flows directly west through FLORENCE. From there it flows through PISA and then enters the Tyrrhenian Sea, an arm of the Mediterranean, about five miles below Pisa. In all the Arno is about 150 miles from source to mouth. Dante alludes to the Arno several times in the COMEDY, including his comment to the two Jovial Friars in the circle of hypocrites in Canto 23 of the INFERNO (l. 95) that he was born in the great city on the banks of the “beautiful Arno.” But Dante’s fullest commentary on his native river occurs in Canto 14 of the Purgatorio. Here the pilgrim Dante converses with GUIDO DEL DUCA of RAVENNA in round two of Purgatory, the circle of the envious (ll. 16–66). When asked where he has come from, Dante replies that he is from the banks of a “little river” in Tuscany that winds from Falterona for more than a hundred miles. Guido recognizes that it is the Arno of which Dante speaks, and another shade (RINIERI DE’ PAOLUCCI DA CALBOLI of Forlì) asks why Dante would want to keep the name of the river secret, as if it were too terrible to pronounce. Guido answers that it would be a good thing if the name of that river were to die, since only beastlike humans inhabit its shores. He goes on to describe the course of the river as it flows through the Casentino, where the men are like foul swine, then avoids Arezzo altogether by turning away from the snarling mongrels who live there. As it passes through Dante’s native Florence, Guido says, the river flows among wolves. Finally it cuts through deep gorges to reach Pisa, a city of foxes known for their cunning and deceit. Guido describes the river as a wild thing—an allusion in part to the sometimes torrential waters of the river, which, because of its many tributaries, could sometimes flood without warning. But the wildness of the river also reflects the human inhabitants it passes on its way. Guido has nothing but contempt for the Tuscan communities on the river’s shore—a contempt given to his character by the exiled Dante lamenting the political strife of his native land. Augustine of Hippo, Saint (354–430) Called by Saint Jerome “the second founder of the faith,”

Saint Augustine of Hippo was the most important of the fathers of the Christian Church. He was an extremely prolific writer, in many cases arguing for what became the orthodox position against such early heretical groups as the Pelagians, the Donatists, and the Manicheans. His best-known works are his Confessions (an account of his early life and conversion) and De civitate Dei (The City of God)—a defense of Christianity against the charge of causing the downfall of the Roman Empire. Augustine was born November 13, 354, in the North African city of Thagaste. Though his father practiced the pagan Roman religion, his mother, Monica, was a Christian, so Augustine grew up knowing the teachings of Christianity. But he drifted away from his mother’s faith in his youth. He obtained a classical Roman education at Madaura and later Carthage, where he studied MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO’s philosophy and where, after reading the Christian scriptures, he was disgusted by the anthropomorphic view of God. He then rejected Christianity and joined the Manicheans instead. After nine years as a Manichean he became disenchanted with that sect as well and turned to skepticism. At the age of 30 he was invited to teach rhetoric at Milan, where he became acquainted with Saint Ambrose, the local bishop, who showed him an allegorical way of reading the Scriptures, converted him to Christianity, and baptized him. Augustine returned to Africa and founded a monastery. He was ordained a presbyter and ultimately a bishop in 396, writing his Confessions about this time. He also took on the task of refuting the Manicheans: Since one of the chief Manichean arguments against Christianity involved the logical absurdities of the book of Genesis, Augustine wrote a treatise called The Literal Meaning of Genesis, in which he explains three “spiritual” levels of meaning beyond the literal level of scriptural texts. These categories—allegorical or figurative, analogical (or typological, in which Old Testament characters are interpreted as prefiguring New Testament ones), and etiological (a special sense dealing with causes)—are not identical to those Dante was later to enumerate in his “Letter to Can Grande,” but Augustine’s treatise did initiate a tradition of reading Scripture allegorically, and, by extension, read-

Averroës ing literature in the manner Dante advocates for his COMEDY. In other texts Augustine argues against the Pelagians that no human being can earn salvation, but rather God predestines individuals for grace—an idea that was to influence John Calvin during the Reformation. His City of God, begun after Christians were blamed for the Visigoths’ sacking of Rome in 410, was not completed until 427. In it he defends Christianity from such charges, asserting that the eternal city of God exists in the world with the earthly city, but that only citizens of God’s city are destined for eternal salvation. Augustine died, on August 28, 430, not long after completing his most famous work—in the midst of a siege of his own city of Hippo by another Germanic tribe, the Vandals. Curiously Dante does not place Augustine among the learned theologians in the Heaven of the Sun in his PARADISO, although SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS mentions him there (Paradiso 10, l. 120) as having borrowed from another soul in that sphere, PAULUS OROSIUS, whose Historiarum libri was used as a source for The City of God. Augustine finally does appear in the Mystic Rose in Canto 32, l. 35, where Saint Bernard points him out to Dante, sitting beneath SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST with SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI and SAINT BENEDICT OF NURSIA. Dante also mentions Augustine twice in DE MONARCHIA (3.3.13 and 3.4.7.8) and several times in the CONVIVIO, where he cites Augustine’s comment in the Confessions that “no man is without stain” (1.4.9), his advice that people needed to develop the virtue of self-control (4.21.14), and his comment that if human beings understood and practiced the virtue of equity, they would need no written law (4.11.8). Averroës (Ibn Rushd) (1126–1198) Averroës (Ibn Rushd in the Muslim world) is one of three medieval Muslim “infidels” whom Dante places in Limbo, the realm of the INFERNO reserved for virtuous pagans and peopled mainly by classical figures. Averroës is mentioned in Canto 4, line 144, in the company of Euclid, Ptolemy Hippocrates, Galen, and another Muslim philosopher, Avicenna. The company he keeps in Limbo suggests that Dante

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thought of him largely as a scientist. Last in this group, he parallels the Saracen warrior Saladin, who a few stanzas earlier appears last in a list of great military leaders. Averroës was well known in Christian Europe for his commentaries on ARISTOTLE: Dante introduces him as the one who wrote the “Great Commentary.” He was sometimes referred to as “the Commentator,” as Aristotle was called “the Philosopher.” Scholastic philosophers, particularly SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, were heavily indebted to Averroës for his commentaries, which were written in Arabic but translated into Latin and Hebrew by Andalusian Jews in the 12th century. By that route they helped introduce Aristotelian philosophy into medieval Jewish and Christian thought in Europe. Averroës was the most important scholar of Islamic Spain in the high Middle Ages. He was born in 1126 into a family of jurists in Córdoba. He was educated in law, medicine, and theology and in 1163 was introduced into the court of Abu ¯ Ya’qu ¯b Yu ¯suf, Almohad ruler of Spain. The new ruler was a student of philosophy, and it was he who asked Averroës to write Arabic commentaries on some of the more difficult works of Aristotle. Averroës accepted the challenge, completing his first commentary in 1169, and over the next few decades wrote 37 more. He was also appointed judge in the city of Seville in 1169. He returned to his native city of Córdoba in 1171, probably to assume the post of chief judge. In 1182 he was appointed court physician to Abu ¯ Ya’qu ¯b Yu ¯suf, and he kept that position under his son and successor, Abu ¯ Yu ¯suf Ya’qu ¯b. But in 1191 Averroës was forced to leave the court, probably at the insistence of a conservative religious element who saw some of his philosophical arguments as heretical and burned a number of his books upon his exile. Ultimately, however, Averroës was pardoned, and he retired to Marrakesh, where he died in 1198. Some 28 of Averroës’ 38 commentaries survive in the original Arabic. We also have Hebrew translations of 36 of his works and Latin texts of 34. He wrote commentaries on all of Aristotle’s major works except the Politics. These texts fall into three categories: the short or epitome (a brief synopsis or summary), the intermediate or middle (a lon-

390 Averroës ger interpretive treatise), and the major or magna (including the text along with a detailed commentary). For some Aristotelian works Averroës composed all three types of commentary. In addition Averroës wrote treatises defending the study of philosophy against the sort of critics who ultimately drove him from the royal court—those who believed philosophy was incompatible with Islam. The most famous of these texts is the Taha¯fut alTaha¯fut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), a title that plays on the earlier 12th-century Persian scholar Algazali’s attack on Aristotle called The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Aside from essentially reintroducing the influence of Aristotle to the Latin West, Averroës was also associated with certain philosophical positions

himself. Among these were the denial of individual providence, the doctrine of the eternity of the world, and the denial of the immortality of the individual soul. Averroës asserted that his views were compatible with Islam, but his books were burned in Spain. The Christian Church also condemned these views, and when Latin “Averroists” at the University of Paris concocted the principle of the “double truth” (the doctrine that faith and reason could reach “truths” that were contradictory), the church denounced that view as well. It is certain that orthodox theologians would have condemned Averroës to Dante’s circle of heretics in Hell. Dante’s decision to place the Commentator in Limbo was therefore a rather bold statement about the value of human reason.

B Bardi, Simone de’ (13th–14th century) The husband of Bice Portinari, Dante’s beloved Beatrice, Simone de’ Bardi was a wealthy Florentine merchant and banker, a member of the famous Bardi banking family. The Bardi were Florentine GUELPHs who founded a great banking house that became known throughout Europe. Although in 1345 the Bardi bank failed (owing almost 1 million gold florins), in 1287 Simone de’ Bardi was still quite wealthy when he took Beatrice Portinari as, apparently, his second wife. Three years later Beatrice was dead. Generally little is said of Simone’s life after Beatrice, and, indeed, readers of Dante typically see him only as the man who married Dante’s beloved. However, Simone became notorious some 11 years later when, in June 1301, he secretly visited the count of Battifolle and his son, offering them money from the Black Guelphs of FLORENCE to raise an army, apparently in support of the pope and his ally CHARLES OF VALOIS and in the hope of returning exiled Black leaders like CORSO DONATI back into the city. When the Florentine Council uncovered evidence of the conspiracy in the form of incriminating letters between Bardi and the count, Simone was declared an outlaw. In one of history’s great ironies Dante himself may have been among the council members voting to condemn the husband of his beloved Beatrice.

Dante’s, and that he fashioned lutes and perhaps other musical instruments. Some early commentators on the COMEDY claim that he was also a musician and that Dante, a lover of music himself, knew Belacqua in that capacity. Most sources agree that Belacqua was well known for his laziness, and one early source asserts that Dante often used to upbraid him for it. One early commentator on the Comedy relates a story of an exchange between Dante and Belacqua, in which Belacqua cited ARISTOTLE’s opinion that sitting quietly enhanced one’s intelligence. Dante answered that if men became wise by sitting and doing nothing, Belacqua must be the wisest man of all time. Some of this may simply be inferred from the passage in Canto 4 of the PURGATORIO in which Belacqua appears. Scholars have identified Duccio di Bonavia of FLORENCE as the most likely candidate for the man nicknamed “Belacqua”: Duccio is known to have been living still in 1299 but had died by 1302; thus he may well be the person Dante pictures as having recently arrived in Purgatory. In the Purgatorio Dante and Virgil are beginning to struggle up Mount Purgatory until, winded, they stop for a short rest in Ante-Purgatory, the ledge near the foot of the mountain reserved for those who repented late in life. Virgil explains that the climb will become gradually less arduous as they approach the summit, where Dante will have a chance to rest. At that point a sarcastic voice suggests that Dante may want to rest again before

Belacqua (d. ca. 1300) Little is known of Belacqua except that he was a Florentine and a friend of 391

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that. As Dante and Virgil look around for the source of the comment, they see a group of souls resting in the shade of a large rock. One of these is seated with his head resting between his knees, and Dante comments upon his indolent posture. The spirit looks up, and Dante recognizes him as his old friend Belacqua. Dante is glad that he need no longer worry about the fate of Belacqua’s soul, but he asks why he is simply sitting there in the shade. Is Belacqua just being his old lazy self again? Dante wonders. But Belacqua reveals that because of his late repentance he is forced to delay his climb through Purgatory to Paradise for at least as many years as he lived on earth—unless, Belacqua adds, some righteous soul prays for him (Purgatorio 4, ll. 97–135). Bella (Gabriella degli Abati) (d. ca. 1272) Bella (probably short for Gabriella) was the name of Dante’s mother, about whom very little is known. She was probably the daughter of Durante and granddaughter of Scolaio decli Abati, a wealthy landowning family with strong GHIBELLINE sympathies. She married ALIGHIERO DI BELLINCIONE D’ALIGHIERO (ALIGHIERO II) sometime in the early 1260s, and the couple had their first and only child, Dante Alighieri, in May 1265. It seems likely that Dante (a shortened form of Durante) was named for his maternal grandfather. Bella died when Dante was about seven years old, and soon after, Alighiero married a woman named Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi, who bore Alighiero another son and two daughters. Dante never mentions his mother in any of his works, though at one point in the INFERNO, echoing the Gospel reference to the Virgin Mary, Virgil says to Dante, “Blessed is the womb that bore you” (Canto 8, l. 45). Bello, Geri del (late 13th century) One of his own kinsmen whom Dante places in Hell is Geri del Bello, the grandson of Alighiero I and therefore first cousin to Dante’s father, ALIGHIERO DI BELLINIONE D’ALIGHIERO (ALIGHIERO II). Little is known of Bello’s life beyond his mention in a document of 1269 granting reparations to Florentine GUELPHs for damages suffered after the GHIBELLINE victory in the Battle of Montaperti in 1260. Dante places

him among the “sowers of discord” in the ninth bolgia of circle eight of Hell (INFERNO 29, ll. 4–36). Here Virgil asks Dante why he keeps looking back into the ninth bolgia, and Dante answers that he is searching for a close kinsman whom he expected to see there. Virgil answers that he had seen the soul whom Dante sought—Geri del Bello—pointing angrily at Dante while the pilgrim was distracted by the figure of the headless BERTRAN DE BORN. Dante explains that Geri had been murdered, and that his death had not yet been avenged by his family, a retaliation that was considered obligatory in the clannish ethical code of the time. The precise circumstances of Geri’s violent death are uncertain, but by all accounts he was a factious character who seems to have enjoyed causing trouble. One (probably apocryphal) early account claims that in retaliation for the murder of his father by one of the Geremei (an important Guelph family of Bologna), Geri disguised himself as a leper and went to the door of the Geremei house, killing the master of the house when he opened the door. Banished by the authorities to the town of Facecchio, Geri was soon slain in retaliation by Germia d’ Geremei, whose uncle was podestà of Facecchio. More reliable sources claim that Geri was involved in a blood feud with the Sacchetti family of FLORENCE. Geri had apparently “sown discord” among the Sacchetti and was slain as a result by Brodaio dei Sacchetti. By 1300, the date of Dante’s fictional journey, Geri was still unavenged. Thirty years later, however, Geri’s nephews apparently avenged their uncle by killing one of the Sacchetti. This scenario is more likely than the former because a surviving legal document from 1342 records an act of reconciliation between the feuding Sacchetti and Alighieri families (mediated by the duke of Athens) and was guaranteed by Dante’s own half brother, Francesco, on behalf of his family. Benedict of Nursia, Saint (ca. 480–ca. 547) Saint Benedict was the founder of the Benedictine order, the earliest of the religious orders of the Latin Church, and hence has been called “the patriarch of Western monasticism.” Benedict was born in Nursia (now called Norcia) into a noble

Benvenuto da Imola family and was sent to Rome for his education. But Benedict was apparently appalled by the immoral behavior of his fellow students and left Rome at the age of 14 to become a hermit in the mountains near Subiaco, in the Anio Valley about 50 miles east of Rome. For three years he lived there alone in a cave, attaining a reputation for holiness throughout the area. Impressed by his devoted ascetic life, the monks of a nearby monastery at Vicovaro asked him to join them as their abbot. Benedict reluctantly accepted, warning the monks that his rule would be severe. Despite his warning the monks were shocked by the rigidity of his expectations, and a group of them actually tried to poison him to be rid of him. Benedict needed no second warning and left Vicovaro to return to his cave at Subiaco. Benedict’s reputation continued to grow, and eventually a small community of devoted followers had formed around him. He divided these followers into 12 monastic communities, each with 12 monks and an abbot he appointed personally. But eventually communal jealousy and squabbling convinced Benedict to leave Subiaco for good. With a small band of companions he traveled to the ancient town of Cassinum, about midway between Naples and Rome. Here on the site of an ancient temple of Apollo on a hill overlooking the town Benedict founded his famous monastery of Monte Cassino in circa 529 C.E. It was here that Benedict composed his extremely influential Regula monachorum, a rule composed specifically for the monks at Monte Cassino, which eventually became the model for virtually all monastic life in the West. The singing of the divine office is the central role of monks, according to the rule, which also stresses obedience, silence, humility, and stability of residence and includes chapters regulating sleep, clothing, meals, possessions, caring for the sick, and, most important, work: Monks under Benedictine rule were required to engage in manual labor and in the education of the young. Benedict died on March 21, probably in about 547, and was buried at Monte Cassino in the same grave as his sister, the virgin Saint Scholastica, who had occasionally visited him in the monastery. His story became widely known when GREGORY

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GREAT (POPE GREGORY I) included a lengthy account of his life in the second book of his Dialogues—an account that Dante followed closely in Canto 22 of the PARADISO. Dante places Saint Benedict in the heaven of Saturn, among the contemplative souls (Paradiso 22, ll. 31–99). Here Beatrice shows Dante a number of bright spheres of light, and the largest and brightest of these responds to Dante’s unspoken wish to speak with him, revealing that he is Benedict. He tells Dante of his life at Monte Cassino, relating how he won the inhabitants of that area back from pagan customs. He then introduces Dante to two of the other glowing spheres: Macarius (founder of Eastern monasticism) and Romuald (founder of the reformed Benedictines called Camaldoli in the late 10th century). When Dante expresses a wish to see the saint in bodily form, Benedict tells him that he must wait until Dante reaches the Empyrean itself. Then after bewailing the current state of the monastic orders, he draws back among the other spheres. Ultimately when Dante does reach the Empyrean and the arena of the heavenly Rose, Saint Bernard points out Benedict, sitting among the blessed below the seat of SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST, between SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI and SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (Paradiso 32, l. 35). THE

Benvenuto da Imola (ca. 1320–ca. 1388) Benvenuto was an early Dante critic and commentator. He was born in Imola between 1320 and 1330. His father had a school in Imola, where Benvenuto probably received his early instruction. He may have completed his education in Bologna—he was there from 1361 to 1363, writing a summary of Roman history called Romuleon. He remained in Bologna after a failed diplomatic mission to Pope Urban V in Avignon on behalf of Imolan independence led him to go into exile, and he stayed there at the university until the late 1370s. He moved to Ferrara after his criticism of some of his university colleagues on ethical grounds made him unwelcome. In Ferrara as he had in Bologna, he lectured on Virgil, LUCAN (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS), SENECA (LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA THE YOUNGER), Valerius Maximus, FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) Petrarch, and GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. Benvenuto owed some

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of his understanding of Dante to Boccaccio’s lectures and his Vita di Dante. There are three extant versions of Benvenuto’s commentary on the COMEDY. The first, from a manuscript preserved at Turin, was published in 1875. The second version, written while Benvenuto was in Ferrara, is in a manuscript in FLORENCE and remains unpublished. The third version survives in several manuscripts and was published in 1887. It is the most significant, as it is the first humanistic commentary we have of the Comedy. Benvenuto died in Ferrara between 1387 and 1388. His last written work is thought to be the Augustalis libellus, an account of the Roman emperors. Stephanie Fritts Bertran de Born (ca. 1140–1215) Bertran de Born, lord of Hautefort in Limoges, was born into a noble Limousin family and became embroiled in the recurrent battles between England’s King Henry II and his sons. But he is best remembered as a major troubadour poet, author of 44 extant lyrics. Known for his realistic military poetry, Bertran is most admired for his complaint on the death of Henry’s eldest son, known as the “Young King.” Bertran was essentially a mercenary whose livelihood depended primarily on the military success of whomever he happened to be fighting for. It appears that he was motivated largely by attempts to wrest from his brother, Constantine, sole possession of his family inheritance, the castle of Hautefort. When Richard I, then duke of Aquitaine, supported Constantine in the quarrel over Hautefort, Bertran joined in an uprising against Richard. Later Bertran supported Richard’s older brother, Henry the “Young King,” in his rebellion against his father, Henry II. When that rebellion ended with the Young King’s death of fever in 1183, Richard captured Hautefort castle and imprisoned Bertran. Ultimately Richard pardoned Bertran and restored his property to him. After the reconciliation Bertran even wrote two songs honoring Richard. He was able to leave Hautefort to his sons, one of whom became a troubadour himself, known as Bertran de Born lo Fils. Tradition says that Bertran retired in 1295 to the Cistercian monastery

of Dalon, near Hautefort, where he died in 1215. Perhaps he became a monk; in any case his family contributed generously to the monastery. It is precisely Bertran’s generosity that Dante extols in his Convivio 4.11.14. Dante also recognized Bertran’s preeminence as a poet of arms in his DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA. But Dante’s most memorable image of Bertran occurs in Canto 28 of the INFERNO, where Bertran is condemned among the sowers of discord for his role in the Young King’s rebellion. Here Dante depicts Bertran carrying his own head like a lantern, an image possibly suggested by an early biography of Bertran, in which he is quoted as saying that he lost all his wits when the Young King died. Bianchi The Bianchi, or “Whites,” were one of the factions into which the Florentine GUELPH party split in about 1300. The Guelph party, which had controlled the city since about 1267, was historically the party of the middle class, which resisted imperial control and allied itself with the interests of the pope in Italian politics. By 1300, however, the Guelphs themselves were separating into the Bianchi, a more moderate branch of the party, and the NERI or “Black Guelphs,” who tended to be more radical and more extreme in their defense of papal interests. The Bianchi of FLORENCE were led by the powerful but newly rich Cerchi family and were made up mainly of merchant families whose chief interest was peace, with the uninterrupted practice of trade. The Neri were led by the ancient Donati clan, a powerful family with connections to banking interests in the city and throughout Europe. Aside from interests in the church, the Neri encouraged the Imperial ambitions of Florence. POPE BONIFACE VIII openly supported the Neri party and received significant funding from Florentine banks. This papal opposition eventually pushed the White Guelphs into the camp of their traditional rivals, the GHIBELLINEs, in supporting Imperial interests over those of the pope. The Bianchi-Ner rivalry had its origins not in political differences but in purely domestic squabbles. In the Tuscan city of Pistoia, less than 30 kilometers northwest of Florence, a quarrel arose between two branches of the Cancellieri family.

Bianchi Ill feeling had simmered for some time between the children of Ser Cancellieri by his wife Bianca and his children by his other wife. One FOCACCIA Cancellieri (one of the Biancan branch of the family), angered when one of his young cousins struck Focaccia’s father, seized the boy, dragged him into a stable, and cut off his hand. Unsatisfied with his revenge, Focaccia hunted down the boy’s father— his own cousin, but not of the Biancan branch of the family—and murdered him. The uncle’s side of the family, taking the name Cancellieri Neri in opposition to the Cancellieri Bianchi, in turn took revenge on Focaccia’s wing of the family, and before long all of Pistoia had taken sides in the feud and the city was in a state of civil war. Concerned with keeping the peace, Florence intervened in the violence and imprisoned the leaders of the two factions in Florence. Although this measure had the effect of stabilizing the situation in Pistoia, it had the unanticipated consequence of drawing the feud into Florence itself. In Florence the Donati clan allied itself with the Cancellieri Neri, while the Donati’s wealthy upstart rivals, the Cerchi, took the side of the Cancellieri Bianchi. The division, of course, had nothing to do with politics in the beginning, but before long differences on other issues became attached to one faction or the other, so that ultimately the Black Guelphs were those staunchly devoted to the traditional Guelph cause, while the White Guelphs became those who were disenchanted with the politics of Boniface VIII. The political division in the city broke out into open violence on May Day, 1300, when a municipal dance at the Piazza de Santa Trinita ended in a violent confrontation between two groups of young men on horseback—one a group of Cerchi and their friends and the other a group of Donati. In the ensuing brawl one of the Donati cut off the nose of 16-year-old Ricoberino de’ Cerchi. Later the Donati and their supporters broke up a parade at the Feast of San Giovanni on June 24 by verbally assaulting a group of guild leaders, who, as lower middle class, were allied with the White faction. The priors of Florence were now forced to take action to squelch the constant threat of violence in the city. Dante, who had just been elected one of

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the six priors in 1300, was forced into the difficult position of passing judgment on his own friends and, in some cases, family. Though his own sympathies lay with the White party, Dante agreed for the good of the city to exile the leaders of both groups. Among these was his wife’s kinsman CORSO DONATI, a leader of the Blacks, who fled to Rome and began laying plans to take back the city. Also banished was Dante’s “first friend,” GUIDO CAVALCANTI, who, as a leader of the White Guelphs, was exiled to Sarzana (where Cavalcanti contracted malaria—he died in August). While many of the exiled Whites returned to the city within a few months, the Blacks remained banished. Pope Boniface could not allow this situation to stand. In May 1301 he invited CHARLES OF VALOIS into Italy for the stated purpose of reestablishing a French presence in Sicily. But Boniface also named Charles “peacemaker” of TUSCANY. When in June Boniface asked for 100 troops from Florence to serve in the papal army, Dante opposed the measure, though the city council agreed to the request over Dante’s objection. When Charles of Valois met with Corso Donati in Siena in September, Dante urged his fellow citizens not to compromise with Charles. But when Charles joined forces with the exiled Black leaders at Castel della Pieve halfway between Rome and Florence, the city council opted to send a three-man diplomatic mission to negotiate with Boniface. Dante was one of that mission. While Dante waited in Rome, Charles of Valois entered Florence in November at the head of an army. He dissolved the elected government and forced new elections, which put all Black Guelphs in power. Corso Donati returned from exile and led a mob of his followers in a riot that destroyed the homes of leading Whites. In January 1302 the Black government found Dante found guilty in absentia of graft in office and on March 10 sentenced the poet and other leading Whites to permanent exile, subject to death at the stake if they were captured. Thus through the machinations of Boniface the Black Guelphs ultimately prevailed in Florence. Dante makes several allusions to these events in the COMEDY. Easter 1300, the fictional date of Dante’s journey, would have been just a few weeks

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before the initial outbreak of violence on May Day, so all references to the Bianchi-Neri feud are in the form of prophecies. In the INFERNO CIACCO foresees the bloody fighting between the parties and predicts the banishment of the Blacks as well as the downfall of the Whites “within three suns” at the hand of one who currently is not taking sides (i.e., Boniface) (Inferno 6, ll. 64–72). Later VANNI FUCCI predicts the exile of the Blacks from Pistoia in 1301 as well as the driving of the Whites from Florence, adding that he tells the pilgrim this to make him suffer (Inferno 24, ll. 143–150). In the PURGATORIO HUGH CAPET deplores what he foresees as the career of his descendant Charles of Valois, who he says “bursts the guts of Florence with one thrust,” winning only “sin and shame” (20, ll. 74–75). Finally in Paradise Dante’s great-greatgrandfather, CACCIAGUIDA, refers to the poet’s life in exile, one of the greatest burdens of which will be the “despicable, senseless company” (PARADISO 17, l. 62) of his fellow White Guelph exiles, from whom Dante had dissociated himself after the first few years of his banishment, essentially eschewing partisan politics altogether after seeing what they had done to his city and his own life. Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–1375) One of Dante’s most influential and important admirers, Boccaccio in his popular lecture series on Dante’s COMEDY helped reaffirm Dante’s belated acceptance in his home city of FLORENCE in 1372–73. An important author of poetry and prose fiction in his own right, Boccaccio was strongly influenced by Dante and by Dante’s successor and his own contemporary, FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) PETRARCH. Boccaccio was the natural son of a Florentine merchant who legitimized him and introduced him into his household in 1320. Educated in business, Boccaccio moved to Naples in 1327 when his father was made chamberlain in the court of ROBERT OF ANJOU, KING OF NAPLES, where he represented the banking interests of the powerful Bardi family. But Boccaccio was unhappy in banking and in 1331 began to study canon law at the University of Naples, where he was the student of Dante’s friend and fellow poet CINO DA PISTOIA. Inspired by the excellent library of the university, Boccac-

cio began his own poetic career in about 1334 with the poem Caccia di Diana (“Diana’s hunt”), which he wrote in TERZA RIMA to emulate Dante. He followed this with Il Filocolo (“Love’s Labor”) in 1336, the first prose romance in Italian, in which he retells the popular story of Floris and Blancheflor. In the first book of Il Filocolo Boccaccio describes his meeting with his ideal woman, Fiametta (who has been identified as Maria d’Aquino but may be a literary fiction), whom he depicts as his inspiration, like Dante’s Beatrice (or Petrarch’s Laura). Fiametta appears in several of Boccaccio’s later works, including the Teseide and the Decameron. Boccaccio followed Il Filocolo with his poetic version of the Troilus and Criseyde story, Il Filostrato (“The Love-Struck”), the chief source for Chaucer’s version. But some time after he finished his poem, he was forced to leave Naples. The financial crisis that followed the failure of the Bardi banking houses in 1341 forced Boccaccio to return to Florence, where, despite his efforts, he was never able to find a wealthy patron. Il Teseide (“The Book of THESEUS”), an epic-length romance of Arcite and Palamon and the source of Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale,” was published by Boccaccio on the edge of poverty. Over the next few years Boccaccio turned from romances to didactic allegories, which seemed more to the taste of his bourgeois Florentine audience. He wrote several of these, including the Commedia delle ninfe (“Comedy of the Florentine Nymphs”), which is written, as is Dante’s VITA NUOVA, in alternating passages of verse and prose. Boccaccio’s most important work of these years, though, was his Decameron. Written between 1348 and about 1352, this collection of 100 short stories or novella, depicted as if told by a group of 10 young Florentine ladies and gentlemen who have fled the city to escape the Black Death, is one of the classics of world literature, both for its gruesomely realistic description of the plague and for its entertaining variety of tales. After 1350 Boccaccio fell under the influence of Petrarch, who enlisted him in the promotion of classical humanism and encouraged him to write didactic works in Latin rather than Italian. Boccaccio’s De casibus virorum illustrium (“The Fates of Illustrious Men”) and De claris mulieribus (“Concerning

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus Famous Women”), both written between 1355 and 1361, were the first fruits of this new direction for Boccaccio. He also worked for some 15 years on Genealogia deorum gentilium (“The Genealogy of the Gentile Gods”), a study of classical mythology that he completed about 1365. At the same time his veneration of Dante had led him to compose his Trattatello in laude di Dante (“In Praise of Dante”), a biography bordering on a saint’s life published in two different versions in 1351 and 1360. Meanwhile Boccaccio’s financial difficulties were mitigated by work he was asked to do for the Commune of Florence, including several diplomatic missions and service in the department of military spending. He also took minor orders in the late 1350s. But by 1370 he was in declining health. In 1372, when he was asked to give a series of lectures on Dante, Boccaccio was suffering from a prolonged illness. But he accepted the challenge, giving several addresses on the COMEDY before his health forced him to discontinue the lecture series after Canto 17 of the INFERNO. Exhausted by his debilitating illness, Boccaccio died on December 21, 1375. Aside from leaving behind his Decameron, the most significant piece of prose fiction of late medieval Europe, Boccaccio is remarkable for his efforts to rescue and preserve the legacy of his idol, Dante. Bocca degli Abati A member of a Florentine GHIBELLINE family who stayed in FLORENCE when other Ghibellines were exiled in 1258, Bocca degli Abati became the most notorious traitor in the city’s history. Fighting on the GUELPH side in the bloody Battle of Montaperti near Siena in 1260, Bocca waited until a crucial point in the fighting, when the outnumbered Sienese Ghibellines had begun a counterattack led by their German allies. Bocca rode to the Guelph cavalry’s standard bearer and hacked off his hand. When the standard disappeared, the Guelph cavalry became confused and panicked and were soon routed. Dante places Bocca in the ninth circle of Hell, the frozen lake of Cocytus where traitors of all kinds are punished. Walking through the ring called Antenora, where traitors to their country are frozen for eternity, Dante inadvertently kicks

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one of the shades in the face (INFERNO 32, ll. 76–123), at which the sinner curses him. When Dante, revealing that he is a living man, offers to take word of him back to the world, the shade curses him again, saying that is the last thing he would want. In response the irate Dante begins yanking hair from the spirit’s head, but the shade still refuses to reveal his identity, until another of the trapped souls calls out his name: It is Bocca degli Abati. Recognizing the traitor’s name, Dante promises to report the story of his disgraceful fate. At that Bocca (whose name means “mouth”) reveals to Dante the name of the sinner who betrayed him—it is the Ghibelline traitor Buosa da Duera of Cremona—along with the names of four other traitors in the same circle. Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (ca. 480– ca. 526) Boethius was one of the most influential philosophers of the Middle Ages. His Consolation of Philosophy (De consolatione philosophiae), a text written while Boethius was in prison awaiting execution under Theodoric the Ostrogoth, examines the question of innocent suffering in a universe governed by a benevolent deity. It was one of the most popular texts throughout Europe for more than 1,000 years. Boethius also wrote treatises on arithmetic, logic, and music that served as textbooks in medieval schools for hundreds of years, and he wrote theological tracts that anticipated and influenced the Scholasticism of later medieval theologians. Born into a rich patrician family of Rome but orphaned at an early age, Boethius became the protégé of the powerful Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, who gave him a thorough education in Greek philosophy. Symmachus also gave Boethius his daughter to marry and introduced the young scholar to orthodox Christianity. At a young age Boethius conceived of the project of translating all the works of PLATO and ARISTOTLE into Latin. He never completed the project, though he did translate Aristotle’s logical treatises, and these translations were the main source for the knowledge of Aristotle in the West until the 12th century. Boethius also wrote a translation and commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge, another logical treatise,

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in which Boethius tackled the question of universals—do universals have a separate existence or do they only exist in bodies? That question was to become one of the most debated and divisive questions in late medieval philosophy. Boethius also wrote several texts on mathematical disciplines, one each on arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Boethius called these scientific disciplines the quadrivium, a name and a grouping that was to become standard as part of the liberal arts curriculum in medieval universities. He dedicated his mathematical treatises to his fatherin-law and benefactor, Symmachus, who seems to have requested that Boethius compose these four texts. Boethius’s De institutione musica became the standard musical textbook in European schools for 1,000 years. Finally Boethius also wrote five short theological studies referred to as Opuscula sacra, on topics such as the Trinity and the nature of Christ. These are influenced by SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, but Boethius’s careful application of logic to theological questions, and his precise distinction between faith and reason, were influential on later medieval Scholastics (theologians such as SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, who applied philosophy to religious questions). Boethius was already a renowned scholar when he entered the service of Theodoric shortly after the year 500. Theodoric had become emperor of the West in 493 by right of conquest and with the nominal support of the Byzantine emperor. Under Theodoric Boethius served in the Senate and became a consul in 510. Both of Boethius’s sons became consuls in 522, at which time Boethius was serving as moister officious (master of offices), a position equivalent to being Theodoric’s prime minister. But a series of events led Boethius into disfavor with Theodoric in 524. By then Theodoric had broken ties with the Byzantine emperor Justin, and a senator named Albinus was accused of conspiring with Byzantium to overthrow Theodoric. When Boethius defended Albinus in the Senate, his own loyalty became suspect. Boethius’s Orthodox Christianity also suggested his loyalty to the Orthodox Byzantines rather than to the Arian Theodoric. Boethius was arrested and charged with treason

and imprisoned in Pavia. Here he wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, the work on which his subsequent reputation mainly depends. In the Consolation Boethius presents a dialogue between the character of Boethius and Lady Philosophy. Boethius begins by complaining of his unjust treatment, and generally asking why God would allow innocent suffering. In alternating passages of verse and prose Philosophy leads Boethius away from despair over his circumstances to acceptance and consolation. Philosophy’s arguments that virtue is its own reward and evil its own punishment, that FORTUNE is fickle and cannot be trusted, and that God’s foreknowledge is not the same thing as predestination and therefore does not affect human free will became commonplaces in later medieval thought and literature. By Dante’s time the Consolation had already been translated into several vernacular languages, including English (by Alfred the Great himself) and French (by Jean de Meun, author of the Roman de la Rose). Boethius was never released from prison. After a long imprisonment and without ever receiving the benefit of a trial, he was condemned and tortured to death sometime between 524 and 526. His remains were eventually moved to a tomb in the Church of Saint Peter in Pavia in 722. He was never officially canonized, but the early medieval church saw him as a martyr to the faith and he was locally revered in Pavia as Saint Severinus. Boethius was also recognized as the most important late Latin or early medieval thinker after Saint Augustine, and a chief vehicle through whom Greek philosophy impacted the Latin Middle Ages. In accordance with the late medieval view of Boethius as Christian martyr, Dante places him in the fourth heaven of the PARADISO, the sphere of the Sun, among the great learned doctors of the church. In Canto 10, ll. 121–129, Thomas Aquinas points out to Dante the soul of Boethius, whom he calls (in an allusion to the Consolation) the one who made clear the deceit of the “world” (that is, of Fortune’s gifts). Aquinas also alludes to Boethius’s imprisonment and torture, and to his later burial in Pavia. Dante alludes to Boethius in other texts as well. He mentions him twice in De monarchia, and no

Bonaventure, Saint 399 fewer than nine times in the CONVIVIO. Among other things Dante mentions Boethius’s contempt for worldly popularity (Convivio 1.9.8) and discusses how he tried to comfort himself after Beatrice’s death by reading Boethius’s Consolation. In addition it is possible that the form of the Consolation, with its alternating passages of verse and prose, may have influenced the similar form Dante chose for his VITA NUOVA. Bonagiunta, Orbicciani da Lucca (ca. 1220– 1297) Bonagiunta was a well-known poet and orator who worked as a notary who produced official documents between 1242 and 1257. He was the son of Perfetto de Orbicciano of Lucca. A good number of his poems are extant, though for the most part they are undistinguished. His poems were criticized even in his own day for being simple imitations of GIACOMO DA LENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINI, “THE NOTARY”)—the Sicilian poet who introduced “courtly love” conventions into Italian poetry and invented the SONNET. His fellow poet Chiaro Davanzati even accused Bonagiunta of plagiarizing from the Notary. Bonagiunta was acquainted with Dante and addressed some poems to him; in another extant poem Bonagiunta criticizes the poetry of Dante’s admired predecessor GUIDO GUINIZELLI. But Dante in turn criticizes Bonagiunta in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA (1.13), along with the influential Tuscan poet GUITTONE D’AREZZO, of using a “plebian” rather than a courtly language. But Bonagiunta is best known today mainly for the appearance he makes in Canto 24 of Dante’s PURGATORIO. Bonagiunta seems to have had a reputation as a heavy drinker, and therefore Dante places him in terrace six, among the gluttonous. He seems especially eager to speak to Dante, and he reveals to the pilgrim a prophecy that a woman named Gentucca will cause Dante to love Bonagiunta’s native city of Lucca (ll. 37–45). While no one has identified this woman, it seems likely that she was someone who befriended the exiled Dante when he sojourned in Lucca around 1314. This is followed by a famous exchange in which Bonagiunta, recognizing Dante as the author of the first CANZONE in the VITA NUOVA, Donne ch’avete

intelletto d’amore (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”), sees that he, Guittone, and Giacomo the Notary had all been held back from the kind of sublime expression of love that Dante attained with his DOLCE STIL NOVO—his “sweet new style” (ll. 55–62). The term, which became the standard label for the love poetry of Dante and his circle, is first used here, spoken by Bonagiunta. Bonaventure, Saint (1221–1274) Giovanni Fidanza, the son of a physician of Bagnorea, was reputedly cured of an illness by SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI at the age of 10, after which his mother is supposed to have changed his name to Bonaventure (i.e., good fortune). Bonaventure was educated by Franciscans and joined the order after earning his master’s degree from the University of Paris in 1243. He taught at the Franciscan school there and was a colleague of the Dominican scholar SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS. When William of Saint Amour criticized the mendicant orders as “false apostles,” Bonaventure and Aquinas wrote the defenses of their respective orders in 1256. The following year Bonaventure was made minister general of the Franciscans. His greatest challenge was an internal conflict among the Franciscans between the “spiritualists,” who wanted strict observance of Francis’s original Rule (the regulations established for members at the founding of the order), and the Relaxati, who sought a relaxation of the Rule. Bonaventure wrote the first constitution of the Franciscan order, thereby successfully resolving the conflict. In 1260 he was also commissioned to write a new life of Saint Francis. He finished two versions of this biography by 1263—a complete Legenda maior and a shorter Legenda minor to use for readings on Saint Francis’s feast day. In Paris in 1267 and 1268 Bonaventure encountered the “doctrine of the double truth” among Aristotelian philosophers at the University of Paris: This was the notion that human reason must accept truths contrary to revealed religion, though both must be considered true. Bonaventure attacked this doctrine in a series of sermons, particularly condemning the idea of the eternity of the universe and of the single intellect for all human beings. He

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returned to Paris in 1273 to preach against the same doctrines. At the same time he was called to Lyons to be appointed cardinal bishop of Albano by Pope Gregory X, who also wanted him to work on plans for reunifying the Roman and Greek Churches. But Bonaventure died shortly after the opening of the Council of Lyons in July 1274. Highly regarded for his saintliness during his own lifetime Bonaventure was canonized in 1482. Pope Sixtus V named him one of the “doctors” of the universal church in 1587. Dante places Bonaventure in the heaven of the Sun among the doctors of the church in Canto 12 of the PARADISO, where, after the Dominican Thomas Aquinas has finished his appreciative life of Saint Francis, the Franciscan Bonaventure returns the compliment and narrates an admiring life of SAINT DOMINIC (ll. 31–105), and then in contrast laments the degeneracy of members of his own Franciscan order (ll. 106–126). Boniface VIII, Pope (ca. 1235–1303) Pope Boniface was Dante’s most bitter enemy. It was Boniface who, according to Dante himself, engineered the poet’s exile from FLORENCE and the ultimate victory of the Black GUELPHs in Dante’s home city. Benedetto Caetani, the future Pope Boniface, was born in Anagni in about 1235. He was educated and distinguished himself as a canon lawyer and in 1281 was made cardinal by Pope Martin IV. Cardinal Benedetto was strongly opposed to the election of the saintly but naïve CELESTINE V as pope and, according to rumors, was instrumental in convincing the unworldly Celestine to abdicate his office and to return to the cloister. In the meantime Benedetto had negotiated with Charles II of Naples, agreeing to support Charles’s claims in Naples and Sicily, in exchange for which Charles was expected to use his influence with several cardinals to support Benedetto’s election as pope to replace Celestine. On Christmas Eve, 1294, he was elected pope as Boniface VIII. During his first years in office Boniface faced sturdy opposition from factions who had supported Celestine, including the spiritualist Franciscans (especially Jacopone da Todi), the citizens of Naples and Sicily opposed to Charles II, and the

powerful Colonna family, with whom he waged a controversial war. For fear that supporters would rally to Celestine in defiance of his own papacy, Boniface kept the former pope imprisoned for the last years of his life. The act that most disgraced Boniface in Dante’s eyes was his inviting CHARLES OF VALOIS, brother of the French king PHILIP IV THE FAIR, to go to Italy and “pacify” the city of Florence. In real terms this meant that Charles would march into Florence on November 1, 1301, return Boniface’s allies (the Black Guelphs) to power, and expel the pope’s enemies, the White Guelphs (Dante’s party)—all of this while Dante and other Florentine emissaries were in Rome trying to negotiate with Boniface. Dante was never to go home to Florence again, suffering banishment on pain of death by the new Black Guelph government. The major challenge of Boniface’s papacy was his turbulent relationship with Philip IV, the French king. The rivalry began in 1296 when Boniface, incensed at Philip’s imposing taxes on French clergy, issued the bull Clericis laicos, denying the power of secular rulers to tax clergy without the consent of the pope. This controversy went on for several years, culminating in Boniface’s bull Unam sanctam (1302), in which the pope declared that all secular rulers were subject to the pope’s authority in temporal as well as spiritual matters. Philip’s response was to send his adviser Guillaume de Nogaret, along with the pope’s old enemy Sciarra Colonna and a company of 1,600 soldiers, to Boniface’s palace at Anagni to seize the pope. Colonna reportedly wanted to kill Boniface, but Nogaret planned to take the pope to France, to appear before a general church council that would depose him. But the people of Anagni rose up in defense of the pope, drove the soldiers from the city, and delivered Boniface safely back to Rome. There, shaken by the experience, the 78-year-old pope died within the month. Boniface’s papacy is remembered more for its scandals than for its triumphs. Although Boniface, a skilled canon lawyer, made significant contributions to church law, he clearly abused his authority in his wars against his fellow Christians and in his employment of Charles of Valois against Florence.

Brunelleschi, Betto In addition Boniface was known for the distribution of ecclesiastical positions to his own family members (including making cardinals of two very young nephews). He and his family grew rich at the church’s expense. Dante’s Comedy is set over Easter weekend 1300, three years before Boniface’s death. Thus the pope does not appear as a character in the text. But his presence is certainly felt. In Canto 19 of the INFERNO POPE NICHOLAS III, chief sinner among the simoniacs in the third bolgia of circle eight, mistakes the pilgrim Dante for Boniface, who Nicholas knows is destined to replace him in the fiery receptacle where he himself is punished. In bolgia eight GUIDO DA MONTEFELTRO tells the story of Boniface’s war on the Colonna family, charges the pope with leading him to damnation, and calls him the “Prince of the New Pharisees” (Inferno 27, l. 85). In the PARADISO CACCIAGUIDA specifically names Boniface as the instigator of Dante’s exile, prophesying that his banishment “is being planned . . . by the one who plots / it there where daily Christ is up for sale” (Canto 17, ll. 49–51). SAINT BONAVENTURE calls the papal see corrupt because of Boniface, its “occupant” (Paradiso 12, l. 90), and SAINT PETER (the first pope), in mounting anger, calls Boniface “he who on earth usurps that place of mine, / that place of mine, that place of mine which now / stands vacant in the eyes of Christ” (Paradiso 27, ll. 22–24). But even Dante cannot condone Philip’s actions at Anagni. In the PURGATORIO he has HUGH CAPET lament what he calls the worst deed of his descendants. Respecting the office if not the man, Dante sees the assault on the pope as an assault on Christ himself: “I see the fleur-de-lis enter Alagna / and in his vicar Christ made prisoner” (Canto 20, ll. 85–87). Branca d’Oria (ca. 1233–1325) Branca d’Oria was a prominent GHIBELLINE from Genoa whose father-in-law, MICHEL ZANCHE, was governor of Logudoro in Sardinia. In 1275, motivated apparently by a desire for Zanche’s wealth, Branca invited his father-in-law to a banquet and, with the aid of a kinsman (either his nephew or cousin), murdered Zanche and his companions. Although Branca did not die until 50 years after his crime, Dante places him in the ninth circle

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of Hell in his DIVINE COMEDY, the fictional date of which is 1300. Dante places him in the round called Tolomea, where betrayers of guests and associates spend eternity frozen in the lake bed of Cocytus (INFERNO 33, ll. 137–147). A special property of this deep level of Hell is that the souls of those who commit sins of this magnitude sink directly into Hell, their bodies on earth inhabited by demons. Thus Branca, as is his fellow inhabitant of Tolomea, FRIAR ALBERIGO, is in Hell while his body remains on earth. Dante places Branca’s victim, Michel Zanche, in the bolgia of the barrators or grafters in the eighth circle of the Inferno (Canto 22). Brunelleschi, Betto (d. 1311) A man instrumental in Dante’s exile from FLORENCE was Betto Brunelleschi. Yet long before he asserted himself as one of Dante’s most implacable enemies Betto and Dante were close friends. As young men the two, along with FORESE DONATI and GUIDO CAVALCANTI, enjoyed a camaraderie rooted in their shared love of poetry. Dante is known to have sent Betto poems as gifts, even a copy of the beloved VITA NUOVA. Unfortunately politics would forever cleave the friendship between Betto and Dante. Betto, along with CORSO DONATI, Pazzino de’ Pazzi, and Geri Spini, became a prominent and powerful Black GUELPH, in staunch opposition to Dante’s White Guelph party. Black Guelph control of Florence is, of course, what produced Dante’s exile. After only a brief six years in power, however, the Black Guelphs of Florence began to quarrel among themselves, producing a permanent separation: Corso Donati, a more turbulent Black Guelph, went his own way, while Betto and the more conservative Blacks stood fast. Corso’s abdication from the party’s main body resulted in his own violent demise: Catalan mercenaries, supposedly commissioned by Betto himself, reportedly drove a lance through Corso’s throat. As a direct consequence of this Betto met a similar fate himself: Relatives of Corso Donati entered Betto’s home in 1311, surprising the Black Guelph leader while he was playing chess, and proceeded to bludgeon him about the head. Betto did not die

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immediately, however; it is reported that he survived in great agony and was in a kind of frenzy for three days prior to death, which he met, reportedly, without repenting or making peace with God. Joshua Gillispie Brunetto Latini (ca. 1220–1294) Brunetto Latini was an important Florentine statesman and writer whom Dante refers to as his “master” in Canto 15 of the INFERNO. Precisely what Dante means by this appellation is a matter of some debate: Brunetto surely was not Dante’s schoolmaster in the common sense of the word—he was far too busy for such an occupation. But clearly Brunetto was Dante’s mentor when the poet was a young man, influencing his views of literature and of politics in a significant way. Brunetto, a leading GUELPH, was involved in Florentine politics from at least 1253. By 1254 he was a notary, an important official position that qualified him for the honorific title of Ser (from Messer), which Dante gives him in the Inferno. By 1260 Brunetto was trusted enough to be sent on a diplomatic mission to King Alfonso X of Castile. But before he could return to FLORENCE, Brunetto learned of the crushing GHIBELLINE victory over the Tuscan Guelphs at Montaperti, and the subsequent expulsion of his party from Florence. Prevented from returning to his native city, Brunetto spent the next six years in France. It was in France that Brunetto composed the two works that built his literary reputation. The first of these, Li livres dou Trésor (“The Book of the Treasure”), is an encyclopedic work in French prose that deals with politics, natural science, history, philosophy, and rhetoric. The second, called the Teseretto (“The Little Treasure”), is a didactic allegorical poem in Italian, written in rhymed heptasyllabic (seven-syllable) couplets. The poem describes a moral journey and almost certainly influenced the concept and perhaps the allegorical approach of Dante’s own COMEDY. In 1266 the Guelphs won a decisive battle at Benevento and expelled the Ghibellines from TUSCANY. The victory enabled Brunetto to return to Florence from exile. Upon his return he once again

became involved in civic politics, rising at one point to the position of chief secretary of the Commune of Florence. Early commentators credit Brunetto with introducing political science to the city and with teaching rhetoric. If the latter assertion is true, then Dante may have studied with him. If it is meant figuratively—that Brunetto perhaps set an example of rhetoric in his public service to which others could aspire—then Dante learned from him in action, and learned, as well, the way a thoughtful and philosophical writer could use poetry to achieve intellectual ends. Brunetto is known to have been married and to have sired several children. Dante, however, places Brunetto in the round of sodomites (the violent against nature), essentially accusing his old master of homosexuality, a grievous sin in medieval theology. No other evidence exists of Brunetto’s alleged sodomy (an act that he condemns in his own writing), and there has been some speculation about the truth of Dante’s charge. Since the pilgrim Dante himself seems surprised to find Brunetto in this circle, it has been suggested that Dante may have learned of Brunetto’s sodomy years after the elder statesman’s death. Some have even suggested that Dante invented the charge, though why he would smear the name of one whom he admired and respected, judging by his character’s depicted relationship with Brunetto in the text, is very difficult to see. Bruni, Leonardo (1369–1444) Recognized as the first great historian of FLORENCE, Bruni was also a humanist and a respected scholar. He was born to a poor family in AREZZO and studied law and the classics as a young man, becoming the star pupil of the famous Greek scholar Chrysoloras. A devout Catholic, Bruni worked as the apostolic secretary in Rome for several years, beginning in 1405 under Pope Innocent VII. His interest in law and literature eventually thrust him into politics, and he was elected chancellor of the Florentine Republic in 1410. He served the Medici family while in office, but after only six months in office he returned to Rome to continue his service to the church, acting as secretary to POPE JOHN XXII, with whom he attended the Council of Constance. He returned to Florence in 1415.

Buiamonte, Giovanni 403 Bruni was one of the foremost Renaissance humanist scholars and composed a number of important texts. He did not produce his most famous work—Historium florentinarum libri XII (“History of the Florentine People in 12 Books”)— until he returned to Florence, where he remained until his death in 1444. This account of the historical, political, social, and religious events and people of 15th-century Florence (influenced to some extent by Bruni’s study of Tacitus) is considered to be the first modern history of the Italian people. Bruni used a three-part view of history, dividing it into the ancient world, the “middle age,” and the modern age, in which he saw himself living. In 1427 Bruni was reappointed chancellor of the Republic of Florence. While holding this position, he worked diligently to revive Florentine education and interest in classic texts and wrote Latin biographies of ARISTOTLE and MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO. He wrote an early Italian biography of Dante—who had died almost 50 years before Bruni’s birth—and a biography of FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) PETRARCH as well. Bruni was also credited with the translation of many texts from Greek into Latin and Italian, thereby increasing the accessibility of Aristotle, PLATO, and others. He obtained a widespread literary celebrity, as well as praise from the Florentine government for his talents in academics and politics. Upon Bruni’s death people traveled from all over Europe to see the great historian put to rest. He was buried at the cemetery of Santa Croce in Florence with a copy of the Historium florentinarum and a crown of laurel encircling his head. Katie Evans Brutus, Marcus Junius (ca. 85–42 B.C.E.) Brutus was one of the leaders of the conspiracy to murder GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR, having been persuaded to join the assassins by CASSIUS (GAIUS CASSIUS LONGINUS). In the eyes of Dante, for whom the empire was essential for universal peace, Caesar’s murder was nearly on a par with JUDAS ISCARIOT’s betrayal of Christ; therefore Brutus and Cassius are condemned in the INFERNO to the lowest circle of Hell, there with Judas to be gnawed eternally in the jaws of Satan (Inferno 34, ll. 55–69).

Brutus was born in Rome and educated by CATO OF UTICA (who appears in Canto 1 of the PURGATORIO), the half brother of his mother, Servilia (who had been mistress of Caesar). He gained a reputation for his personal integrity and his commitment to the ideals of the Roman republic under which he was raised. At the outbreak of the civil war between Pompey and Caesar Brutus followed his uncle, Cato, in supporting Pompey, although Pompey had been responsible for the murder of Brutus’s own father. When Caesar defeated Pompey at Pharsalia in 48 B.C.E., he pardoned Brutus and took him into his favor, appointing him governor of Cisalpine Gaul in 46 B.C.E. and praetor of Rome in 44. In that same year, however, believing it was for the good of the republic, he joined Cassius and the other conspirators and stabbed Caesar in the Forum on the Ides of March. After the assassination Brutus left Italy for Macedonia, where he raised an army and then joined forces with Cassius in Asia Minor to make war on Marc Antony and Caesar’s heir, Octavian (the future Caesar Augustus). The armies met in 42 B.C.E. at Philippi in Macedonia. Brutus defeated Octavian, but Cassius was beaten by Antony and in defeat ended his life. Several days later Brutus lost a second battle against the combined forces of Antony and Octavian, after which he, too, committed suicide. Buiamonte, Giovanni (ca. 1260–1310) Giovanni Buiamonte was a Florentine moneylender, a member of the Becchi family, who according to early commentators is the “sovereign cavalier” referred to by the usurer Rinaldo degli Scrovingi in Canto 17 of the INFERNO (ll. 72–73). Giovanni was descended from a GHIBELLINE family, and his father had been a knight. He was involved in Florentine politics from about 1293 and was made a knight or cavalier as his father was in 1298. He made a fortune lending money, making his family one of the wealthiest in the city. But in addition to being a usurer, he was a gambler who lost a good deal of money and was bankrupted. In 1308–09 he was charged by the Florentine merchant community of making off with money and

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property not his own. Despite his former wealth he died in extreme poverty in 1310. Of course Giovanni was still alive in 1300, the fictional date of the COMEDY. But Dante places him in Hell in anticipation. In round three of circle seven, the round of the usurers, the souls crouch in burning sand with huge money pouches decorated with family coats of arms hanging around their necks. Dante speaks with Rinaldo degli Scrovingi, who says that his ears are filled with his fellow usurers’ calls for the “sovereign knight” to come down—the one who would bear on his moneybag the three goats. (The Becchi coat of arms comprised three black goats on a gold field.) Buonconte da Montefeltro (d. 1289) Buonconte was a GHIBELLINE nobleman, son of GUIDO DA MONTEFELTRO, whom Dante places among the evil counselors in the INFERNO (Canto 27, lines 19–132). As his father had, Buonconte became a leader of the Ghibelline party. He helped to banish the GUELPHs from AREZZO in June 1287, an act that incited FLORENCE to war with Arezzo. In 1288 he was one of the victorious commanders when Arezzo defeated forces from Siena at Pieve del Toppo. But Buonconte is best known as the leader of the Aretine forces at the decisive BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO on June 11, 1289, when the Florentine Guelphs (among whom Dante almost certainly fought) soundly defeated the Ghibelline army. A large number of Aretines were killed in the battle, including Buonconte himself. His body, however, was never found. Dante placed the Ghibelline commander in Purgatory, among the late repentant in Canto 5 (ll. 85–135), where he speaks to Dante of his last moments. As Dante tells it, the wounded Buonconte shed a tear of sincere contrition and uttered the name of the Virgin Mary as he was dying. Forces of good and evil clashed over his soul as it passed from his body, but his late repentance saved him and took him here to Purgatory (the story contrasts with that of his father, Guido, over whom a similar dispute occurred in Canto 27 of the Inferno, but with the opposite result). Meanwhile the demons,

having lost the battle for his soul, were allowed to cast his body into the raging river Archiano, from which it moved on into the ARNO—the reason why his body has not been found. Dante’s Buonconte expresses some sorrow that his wife, Giovanna, has said no prayers for him to lessen his time in Purgatory; therefore he sits waiting among the other late repentant, unable to begin his climb up the mountain. Buoso da Duera (late 13th century) Buoso da Duera was a GHIBELLINE leader of the Lombard city of Cremona, southeast of Milan. He became notorious as a traitor in 1265, when the French nobleman CHARLES OF ANJOU invaded Italy to make war on MANFRED (the son of the Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA) and to claim the Kingdom of Naples. Manfred sent Buoso and another Cremonese Ghibelline leader, the marquis Pallavicino, out at the head of an army to encounter French troops commanded by Guy de Montfort, who was leading them through Lombardy near Parma. All sources agree that Buoso accepted a bribe from the French—according to one early commentator on the COMMEDIA Charles of Anjou’s wife, Beatrice of Provence, provided the funds for the bribe. Subsequently Buoso allowed the French army to pass unchallenged to Parma, and from there through Lombardy to attack Manfred. Buoso’s treachery became known, and he was expelled from Cremona in 1267. In addition it is reported that his entire family was exterminated by the furious Cremonese. Not surprisingly Dante places Buoso in the ninth, or lowest, circle of Hell, specifically in the second ring of ice at the bottom of the Inferno, called Antenor (after the betrayer of Troy): This is where traitors to their country are punished. In Canto 32 of the INFERNO Dante tries to make Bocca degli Albati disclose his identity, even resorting to pulling him by the hair, but Bocca will not answer. But another frozen spirit calls out Bocca’s name, asking him why he screams in pain. The angry Bocca then reveals that the one who betrayed his identity is in fact Buoso da Duera, who is eternally paying for the French silver he took (Inferno 32, ll. 114–117).

C Cacciaguida (ca. 1090–1147) One of the most significant figures the pilgrim Dante meets in his journey through the realms of the afterlife is Cacciaguida, the poet’s great-great-grandfather. Cacciaguida, in the heaven of Mars, is one of the soldiers of Christ beatified there. He tells Dante about his own life and the FLORENCE of his day and goes on to give the pilgrim a clear prophecy of his upcoming exile, while condemning the degenerate Florence of Dante’s time. Through him Dante is able to underscore some of the major themes of his COMEDY. What we know of the historical Cacciaguida is chiefly what he tells us about himself in Cantos 15–17 of the PARADISO. He was born in the Sesto de Porta San Piero section of Florence in about 1290 and was christened in the Baptistry of San Giovanni. He had two brothers, one of whom was named Eliseo, a fact that has led scholars to speculate that Cacciaguida was a member of the ancient Florentine family of the Elisei, supposed to be descended from the Romans who built the city. Cacciaguida married a woman from the Po Valley (perhaps from the city of Ferrara) named Alighiera degli Alighieri, and they named their first son Alighiero, from whom Dante’s family took their surname. Alighiero, Cacciaguida informs the pilgrim, is presently on the terrace of pride in Purgatory. According to his testimony in the Paradiso Cacciaguida followed the Holy Roman emperor, Conrad III, on the disastrous Second Crusade, where he was knighted at the hand of the emperor himself. In 1147 Cacciaguida fell in battle against those he

calls “the vile Saracen” (Canto 15, l. 145). Thus Dante places him in the sphere of Mars, where warriors of the faith form themselves into a bright cross of radiant souls, recalling the red crusaders’ cross. Dante’s encounter with Cacciaguida at this point of his journey does several important things: First, it intentionally parallels the meeting between Aeneas and his father, Anchises, in Book 6 of Virgil’s AENEID, thus providing Dante with his final and ideal father figure. Much of the DIVINE COMEDY is a quest for an ideal father for the exiled pilgrim, soon to be cut off from his roots in his fatherland, and Cacciaguida’s appearance in Canto 15 of the Paradiso parallels the appearance of BRUNETTO LATINI, Dante’s former mentor, in Canto 15 of the INFERNO. There the pilgrim Dante (still imperfect in his judgment at this point) says that Brunetto “taught me how man makes himself immortal” (Inferno 15, l. 85)—a remark of incredible irony made to a soul in Hell. Brunetto, whose concern for his own learning and reputation is misplaced, is not the true spiritual father and can only give Dante veiled hints as to his ultimate fate, telling him that “both parties will be hungry to devour you” (Inferno 15, l. 71). Cacciaguida, by contrast, has truly shown Dante how one is made immortal—through the pure devotion to the highest good that led to his martyrdom. A blessed soul, he can provide Dante with the true prophecy concerning his coming exile (Paradiso 17): Dante will be driven from Florence, he says, as a result of the machinations of POPE BONIFACE VIII and will be forced to leave all that 405

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Caccianemico, Venedico blames the city’s growth on the influx of new citizens from the countryside and the mercantile economy importing luxury goods and asserts how damaging this is to the health of the commonwealth (Paradiso 16). This, Cacciaguida would say, is one of those unpleasant truths that Dante should be bold enough to tell.

Baptistry of Saint John, Florence (Photo by author)

he most loves (an apparent reference not only to his wife and children, but to the city itself). Dante will learn the bitterness of exile, the humiliation of eating the bread and living in the home provided by others. Worst of all he will have to bear the companionship of his wicked and foolish fellow exiles, from whom he will need to distance himself. But Cacciaguida tells Dante not to fear. Now that the pilgrim knows the worst of what will happen to him, he can tell with bold assurance the truths that have been revealed to him on his quest through the worlds of the afterlife and need not fear that he may offend someone with the truth as he writes his great poem. In addition Cacciaguida provides the pilgrim with a mythic history of the city of Florence, contrasting the simple virtue of the sober and temperate Florentines of his own day with the greedy, arrogant citizens of Dante’s time. Cacciaguida

Caccianemico, Venedico (d. 1303) The son of Alberto de Caccianemici, who was head of Bologna’s GUELPH party from 1260 to 1297, Caccianemico lived his life in staunch opposition to the GHIBELLINE party of Bologna. Though serving as podestà (mayor) of Pistoia, Modena, Imola, and Milan at various times throughout his life, he is best remembered for allegedly prostituting his sister, the beautiful Ghisolabella, to the bestial marquis of Este in order to curry political favor. While some say the marquis in question was Azzo VIII, it seems more likely, on the basis of the dates, that it was Azzo’s father, Ibizzo II, to whom Ghisolabella was offered. Ironically it appears that Caccianemici’s expulsion from Bologna in 1289 was a direct result of his alliance with the marquis and his support of the latter’s largely unfavorable Bolognese policies. Caccianemico was an old man when Dante was in Bologna, but people still talked of the scandal. Dante places Caccianemico in the first bolgia of circle eight in the Inferno, among the panderers and seducers. When asked by Dante what put him there, Caccianemico admits that he submitted Ghisolabella to the will of the marquis of Este (Canto 18, ll. 52–57). He then quickly adds that there are more Bolognese panders there with him than the existing population of the entire city (Canto 18, ll. 58–61). Caccianemico, however, is one of only three Bolognese Dante specifically mentions encountering in Hell. Before taking his leave of the infamous Bolognese, Dante watches as a demon appears to slash Caccianemico with a whip, assuring him that he need not linger, for there are no women for hire to be found here (Canto 18, ll. 64–66). Joshua Gillispie Cacus In classical mythology Cacus was the son of the god Vulcan and the Gorgon MEDUSA. He was a monstrous, fire-breathing giant who lived in

Caesar, Gaius Julius a cave at the base of Mount Aventine (one of the seven hills of Rome) and from there preyed upon the people of the surrounding area. According to Virgil (AENEID 8.193–267) Cacus’s cave floor was always warm with the gore of his most recent slaughter, and the pale faces of his human victims were nailed to the doorposts of the cave, which was protected by impregnable iron doors manufactured by Cacus’s father. Cacus made a fatal error, however, when he coveted the cattle that Hercules took to the valley near the cave: a herd of cattle he had won in Spain from the monster Geryon. Cacus stole four bulls and four heifers from the herd, dragging them backward by the tail into his cave. This was a ruse to cover his crime, since all of their tracks would be leading away from his den. However, the bellowing of the rustled cattle from within his cave gave away Cacus’s subterfuge, and Hercules cornered Cacus in his lair. Hercules could not break through Vulcan’s iron doors and in his fury, tore part of a cliff off of Mount Aventine, exposing Cacus in his cave. After a struggle in which Hercules rained weapons down upon Cacus while the monster belched flames and smoke at him, the hero ultimately charged through the fire and seized Cacus in his arms, throttling the life out of him. Dante seems to have taken his image of Cacus in Canto 25 of the INFERNO mainly from Virgil’s story. He apparently misreads Virgil’s reference to the monster as “half-human,” however, and makes Cacus a centaur. Dante also gives Cacus a firebreathing dragon that rides on his back, rather than making Cacus himself the fire breather. Further when Dante refers to Hercules’ slaying of Cacus, he asserts that Hercules beat the monster to death with his famous club. In this Dante may have been relying on the version of the story of OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO) (Fasti 1.575–578), in which Hercules kills Cacus with four blows. Dante, making the story even more brutal than in his sources, says that Hercules gave the centaur 100 blows with his club, of which the pulverized Cacus felt no more than the first 10. Unlike his fellow centaurs, who guard the violent sinners in Phlegethon, the river of blood in Canto 12, Dante’s Cacus is placed in the seventh

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bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell, the bolgia of the thieves. Here, like the other thieves, he is covered by serpents. But like his brother centaurs, he seems to serve a guardian’s role, since when Dante and Virgil see him, he is chasing the sinner VANNI FUCCI. Caesar, Gaius Julius (ca. 100 B.C.E.–44 B.C.E.) Julius Caesar was the most influential political figure of the late Roman Republic. As a military leader he extended the boundaries of the Roman Empire significantly. As a politician he paved the way for the imperial system of government when he assumed dictatorial powers—an act that ultimately led to his assassination. Dante revered him as the founder of the Roman Empire, Dante’s ideal of secular government. Caesar was born in Rome on or about July 12, 100 B.C.E. His family, the Julian clan, was prominent in Roman politics. Early in his career Caesar held several political offices, including quaestor in 69, aedile in 65, and praetor in 62. The following year he was made governor of Roman Spain. When he returned to Rome, he joined Crassus and Pompey to form the First Triumvirate, an alliance that was to dominate Roman politics for six years (and secured in part by Pompey’s marriage to Caesar’s only child, Julia). With the support of Crassus and Pompey Caesar was elected consul in 59 and then was made proconsul of Gaul and Illyricum in 58. He was to stay in Gaul for eight years, conquering the Gallic army, winning the entire territory of modern France and Belgium for Rome, and achieving some initial victories in Britain as well in 55 and 54 B.C.E. While Caesar was in Gaul the triumvirate had fallen apart, Crassus was killed by the Parthians after the Battle of Carrhae (53 B.C.E.) and Pompey had positioned himself more and more as Caesar’s rival since Julia’s death in childbirth in 54. Caesar was determined to return to Rome, and when he famously defied the Senate in 49 B.C.E. by crossing the Rubicon (the official border between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy) without disbanding his army, the act sparked a civil war between Caesar and Pompey, who acted as upholder of the republic. When Caesar decisively defeated Pompey at the

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Battle of Pharsalia in 48, Pompey fled to Egypt, where he was assassinated. Caesar, who had followed Pompey, stayed in Egypt long enough to become involved with the Egyptian princess Cleopatra and saw her established as sovereign in place of her weak brother, Ptolemy XII. In 46 B.C.E. at Thapsus Caesar defeated the remainder of Pompey’s army led by CATO OF UTICA, and the following year he was in Spain defeating the army of Gaeus Pompeius, Pompey’s son, finally ending the civil war. In the meantime Caesar had been made consul, tribune of the people, and dictator of Rome and had begun a number of important reforms in the capital. He issued laws providing debt relief, agrarian reform, and improved housing. He also revised the calendar and built the Forum Iulium. In 44 B.C.E. Caesar was made consul for the fifth time and, more significant, was declared dictator for life. This in particular alienated members of the Senate who revered the republican form of government. A group of powerful senators, led by MARCUS JULIUS BRUTUS and CASSIUS (GAIUS CASSIUS LONGINUS), attacked and murdered Caesar on March 15, 44 B.C.E., ironically at the foot of a statue of Pompey. The ensuing civil war that pitted Brutus and Cassius against Caesar’s heir Octavian (Augustus) and chief lieutenant Marc Antony ultimately ended the Roman republic and established Octavian as the first Roman emperor. In the Middle Ages, however, Caesar himself was thought of as the first emperor, and that is how Dante regards him. In the INFERNO Dante places Caesar in Limbo along with the other notables of classical antiquity. Described as “falcon-eyed and fully armed,” Caesar stands with Hector and Aeneas (Canto 4., ll. 122–123), a grouping that underscores the relationship among ancient Troy, the founding of Rome by surviving Trojans, and the ultimate rise of the Roman Empire—a historical progression that Dante saw as divinely ordained, as the empire was the vehicle for the spread of the Christian faith. This empire, Dante feels, is still necessary and divinely established to secure peace and do God’s will in the secular world (this is, essentially, the theme of DE MONARCHIA). In the CONVIVIO Dante refers to Caesar as the “first supreme prince”

(4.5.12), and in his letter to HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG (epistle 7), he calls Henry the successor to Caesar. It is completely consistent with Dante’s worldview that he places Caesar’s murderers, Brutus and Cassius, in the lowest circle of Hell, ground in the teeth of Satan along with JUDAS ISCARIOT, the betrayer of Christ. Caiaphas, Joseph (first century C.E.) Caiaphas was the Jewish high priest in Jerusalem who, as head of the Sanhedrin, presided at the council that condemned Jesus of Nazareth to death. Caiaphas is mentioned both in the Bible (in Matthew 26.57– 68; John 11.47–54 and 18.24; and Acts 4.6) and by the Jewish historian Josephus. He held the office of high priest from 18 to 36 C.E., longer than any other high priest in first-century Jerusalem. His father-inlaw, Annas, was also high priest (from 6 to 15 C.E.) and is mentioned in biblical accounts as also taking part in the condemnation of Jesus. Though often associated with the Pharisees, whom the Gospels represent in continual conflict with Jesus, Caiaphas and Annas were almost certainly Sadducees, the more conservative sect of Judaism that denied the idea of a resurrection as well as the validity of oral tradition in interpreting the law. Most of the wealthy elite (from whose ranks the high priests would come) were Sadducees in the first century. Caiaphas was appointed high priest by the Roman governor Valerius Gratus in the year 18, and he must have been particularly adept at working with the Romans, because he served an unusually long term and continued in the position even after Gratus was replaced by Pontius Pilate in 26 C.E. The Gospel according to John depicts Caiaphas as planning Jesus’ death in the council, saying that it is expedient that one man die so that the entire nation of Israel may be saved (11.50). The Gospels go on to describe how, after the Temple guard has arrested Jesus, he is taken before the Sanhedrin and accused of blasphemy. Upon Jesus’ failure, or refusal, to answer the charges, he is turned over to Pilate and found guilty of treason, for which he is crucified. Caiaphas remained in power for perhaps 10 more years after the Crucifixion (he presides over

Campaldino, Battle of the trial of SAINT PETER and SAINT JOHN THE APOSTLE in Acts 4). During the Passover festival in 37 C.E. the Roman governor of Syria, Lucius Vitellius, chose to intervene in Jewish affairs and removed Caiaphas from office, replacing him with his brother-in-law, Annas’s son, Jonathan. In December 1990 construction workers in Jerusalem uncovered a first-century tomb that was later identified as the tomb of the Caiaphas family. In a particularly elaborate ossuary (or vault) within the tomb were found the remains of a 60-year-old male believed by archaeologists to be the bones of the first-century high priest. Dante places Caiaphas in Hell, in the bolgia of the hypocrites in circle eight (INFERNO 23). Presumably Dante sees Caiaphas as a hypocrite because his motive for sentencing Christ to death was political expediency rather than a sincere belief in his guilt. As chief sinner in this bolgia Caiaphas is stretched out naked on the ground, crucified by three stakes. All of the other hypocrites in Hell, clothed in heavy, lead-lined monks’ robes, walk over him in an endless line as he lies defenseless, eternally bearing the weight of all the hypocrisy in the universe. Dante and the reader learn that Annas suffers a similar punishment farther along the bolgia, as do all the other members of that council that condemned Jesus. Dante comments that the actions of Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin sowed “seeds of evil” for all the Jews (Canto 23, ll. 121–123). In this he is drawing on the prevailing medieval belief that Vespasian’s destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. and subsequent dispersal of the Jews were a direct consequence of the Crucifixion of Christ. Cammino, Gherardo da (ca. 1240–1306) Gherardo da Cammino was the son of Biaquino da Cammino and India da Camposampiero, and a citizen of Padua. The da Cammino were the leaders of the GUELPHs in Treviso and were opposed by the GHIBELLINE Castelli party. Both parties were active in the struggle for power in Lombardy that followed the end of the conflict between the church and the Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA in the mid-13th century. Lombardy was embroiled in conflict with no clear leadership and multiple groups vying for

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power. In 1268 the Castelli violently seized power in Treviso after expelling the bishop and killing 30 prominent Guelphs, and they set up Gherardo Castelli as the local sovereign. But in 1283 the Guelph Gherardo da Cammino, with support from the bishop, took power in Treviso and served as captain-general there until he died. Ultimately he was to govern Belluno and Feltre as well. His rule was marked by a wisdom and justice that were missing from most of his contemporaries and that gained him the respect of many people, his enemies and Dante included. Dante mentions Gherardo in both the PURGATORIO and the CONVIVIO. Both times Dante stresses the nobility of his rule and gentleness of his nature. In Purgatorio 16 Dante speaks to MARCO LOMBARDO (MARCO THE LOMBARD) on the third terrace of the mountain. Marco stresses the need for the separation of spiritual and secular rule and specifically of the state of the Holy Roman Empire. He makes use of the despotic rule in Lombardy to illustrate the drawbacks of the papacy’s secular power. In lines 121–126 he names three old men who stand against the evils of the region: Currado da Palazzo, Guido da Castello, and the “good Gherardo.” Marco’s reference simply to the “good Gherardo” confuses the pilgrim, who asks Marco which Gherardo he is referring to, and when Marco answers that this Gherardo is the father of Gaia (wife of Tolberto da Camino), this detail makes his identity clear. Robert Giles Campaldino, Battle of (1289) In the Casentino region of TUSCANY in the upper ARNO Valley is a small plain called Campaldino. Here, on June 11, 1289, was fought the most significant battle of Dante’s lifetime. An army of Florentine GUELPHs (with allies from Pistoia, Siena, and Lucca), consisting of perhaps 10,000 foot soldiers and 1,600 cavalry, routed an army of GHIBELLINEs from AREZZO, whose cavalry numbered about half that of FLORENCE. The decisive victory established Florentine— and, more importantly, Guelph—hegemony over all of Tuscany for Dante’s lifetime. The battle seems to have begun when the Florentines began to attack and plunder palaces

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belonging to the conte Guido Novello, who was podestà (chief magistrate) of Arezzo. Guido rode out at the head of an army but notoriously fled from the battle. The other important Ghibelline leader, BUONCONTE DA MONTEFELTRO, was killed and his body was never found. Dante places Buonconte among the late repentant souls in PURGATORIO 5, where the slain captain claims that he followed the course of the Arno after receiving his death wound in the battle, and that with his final breath he uttered the name Mary—an act that saved his soul (Purgatorio 5, ll. 94–102), though his body was swept away by the Arno. The Florentine captains of the battle included VIERI DE’ CERCHI and CORSO DONATI, who became the leaders, respectively, of the White and Black parties into which the Guelphs of Florence later split. According to the 14th-century historian Giovanni Villani it was the valorous attack on the Aretine flank—led by Corso against the orders of his superior officers—that turned the tide of the battle and won the day for the Florentines. The Battle of Campaldino is of particular interest to Dante’s biographers because many believe that the 24-year-old Dante took part in the battle himself as a member of the cavalry, the aristocratic branch of the Florentine army. Although no early historians mention Dante among the participants, the poet himself, recalling his own military experience, says in INFERNO 22 (ll. 4–5), “I have seen scouts ride, exploring your terrain, / O Aretines”— an apparent allusion to Campaldino. Campo Piceno This area, a large field in the vicinity of Pistoia, is mentioned in Canto 24 (l. 148) of Dante’s INFERNO. The thief VANNI FUCCI is introduced in this canto and is seen being bitten by snakes and burning to ashes only to be reborn as a phoenix is. He is receiving punishment for his robbery of a cathedral in Pistoia. While he escaped earthly judgment (others were falsely accused and punished), he is consigned to the eighth circle of Hell for his sins. After recounting to the pilgrim the details of his mortal transgressions, Fucci then predicts a battle upon Campo Piceno, one in which the White GUELPHs would be defeated by a coalition of Blacks led by MOROELLO MALASPINA.

The battle referred to is possibly the siege of Serravalle in 1302 by the Florentine and Lucchese Blacks in their attack on Pistoia after having been driven out by the Whites. However, the reference might also allude to the same group’s 1305 siege of Pistoia that ultimately resulted in the city’s reduction. In 1306 the area was divided between FLORENCE and Lucca. The name Campo Piceno seems to imply a connection to Picenum of ancient Roman Italy. However, Picenum was a district near the Adriatic coast in what is now Marche, which is too far to assume a direct relationship. The incorrect usage probably stems from a misunderstanding of Sallust’s account of Catiline’s defeat. Two phrases in this account, in agro Piceno and in agrum Pistoriensem, may have led to a false connection between the distant regions. Anthony Hafner Can Grande della Scala (1291–1329) Perhaps Dante’s most important patron during his exile, Can Francesco della Scala (known as Can Grande) was the GHIBELLINE lord of VERONA from 1311 until 1329. From about 1312 until 1318 Dante was Can Grande’s guest in Verona. It was the poet’s longest single sojourn anywhere during his exile. Can Grande was the third son of Alberto della Scala, who ruled Verona from 1277 to 1301. Upon his death his eldest son, Bartolomeo, became lord of the city, but Bartolomeo died as well in 1304. In 1308 Can Grande married the daughter of Conrad of Antioch (illegitimate son of Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA). In the same year with his brother, Alboino, he was named joint vicar imperial of Verona by the new Emperor, HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG. Upon Alboino’s death in 1311 Can Grande became sole vicar Imperial. He then embarked on a series of military exploits in the Ghibelline cause. He captured Brescia and Vicenza in 1311 and was made lord of Vicenza in 1312. He began a lengthy struggle with Padua, besieging the city in 1317. In 1318 he captured Cremona and was elected captain general of all Ghibelline forces in Lombardy. He besieged Padua again in 1327 and in 1328 became lord of Padua at the invitation of the city’s Ghibellines. In 1329 he captured Treviso, where he died on July 22, and was taken home to be interred in

Capaneus Verona, where his tomb and equestrian statue can still be seen. Can Grande was described as courtly, handsome, and of military bearing by his admirers, but vindictive, harsh, and stubborn by his enemies. Dante introduces him in the 17th canto of the PARADISO, where CACCIAGUIDA predicts a great future for the child (Can Grande would have been only nine years old in 1300, the fictional date of the COMEDY). He was born under Mars, Cacciaguida says, a sign that bodes well for his success in battle (ll. 76–78). He is generous and cares little for riches (ll. 83–86), and Dante can place his hopes for the future in him (ll. 88–90). Some scholars have seen the greyhound of INFERNO 1 (l. 101) as referring to Can Grande, and many have similarly interpreted Beatrice’s veiled reference to “five hundred, ten, and five” (spelling dux, or leader) in PURGATORIO 33, l. 43 (although it seems more likely that the allusions are to Henry VII). In his lengthy 13th epistle (a letter whose authenticity has often been challenged) Dante dedicates the Paradiso to Can Grande, at the same time explaining the title and subject matter of the Comedy. The letter is often cited for its exploration of Dante’s fourfold allegorical method of composition, but it contains, as well, praise of Can Grande’s brilliance and gratitude for his generosity and hospitality to the exiled poet. canzone In DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA Dante lauds the canzone as the highest form of Italian verse. The canzone (plural canzoni) was a long lyric poem that became popular in Italy in the late Middle Ages. Although Dante calls it the ideal form for writing about poetry’s three noblest topics (virtue, value, and love), in fact virtually all extant canzoni are poems of love. The canzone was essentially derived from the canso, the long love poem used by the Provençal troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries. As developed in Italy, the canzone was made up of five to seven stanzas of the same rhyme scheme. Stanzas contained anywhere from seven to 20 hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) lines, and the poem would very often conclude with a kind of envoy, called a commiato, which summarized or closed the poem and was only about half the length of the stanzas in the main body of the lyric.

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The canzone first appears in the poetry of GIALENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINI, “THE NOTARY”), the leading poet of the Sicilian school of Italian poetry centered in the court of the Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA. Among the most notable and influential canzoni in Italian literature were “Al cor gentil” (“The Gentle Heart”) by the great Tuscan poet GUIDO GUINIZELLI and “Donna me prega” (“A Lady Asks Me”) by Dante’s friend GUIDO CAVALCANTI. Both of these poems influenced Dante, who wrote several canzoni that are included in his VITA NUOVA and the CONVIVIO. Some of his bestknown canzoni are “Voi che ‘ntendendo il terzo ciel movete” (“You who by understanding move the third Heaven”) from Convivio 2, “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona” (“Love, who in my mind discourses”) from Convivio 3, and his allegorical poem about exile, “Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute” (“Three ladies have come around my heart”). Dante describes the technical aspects of the canzone form in De vulgari eloquentia: The canzone, he says, utilizes a three-part structure contained within a two-part structure. Each canzone contains a head and a tail, or fronte and sirma (frons and cauda in Latin). The first part, the frons, is divided into two parts, which Dante calls peidi or feet, and these two feet are structured identically. The cauda completes the poem and may or may not include an ending commiato. The canzone’s structure, then, could be represented as AA/B—a structure that was to influence the development of the much shorter SONNET form (containing an octave that might be divided into two quatrains, followed by a concluding sestet). Through its influence on the sonnet the canzone ultimately influenced the entire future development of European verse. The form of the canzone itself was ultimately fixed by the influence of Dante’s successor, FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) PETRARCH, who wrote a number of canzoni, all with five to six stanzas and a commiato. The standard canzone petrarchesca thus became the accepted form of the genre throughout the Italian Renaissance. COMO DA

Capaneus In classical mythology Capaneus was one of the captains who besieged the city of Thebes in the political turmoil that followed the death of

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Oedipus. Known for his arrogance and recklessness, Capaneus was the son of Hipponous and the father of Sthenelus, the charioteer of the great hero DIOMEDES. He was married to Evadne, the daughter of Adrastus, king of Argos. When Capaneus died, Evadne threw herself upon his funeral pyre. As told by the Greek playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides and the Roman poet PUBLIUS PAPINUS STATIUS, when Oedipus was exiled, the throne of Thebes passed to his sons, Eteocles and Polynices, who agreed to reign alternately, a year at a time. But Polynices, the elder son, was ousted and exiled by his brother. In exile he planned to attack Thebes and his brother and raised an army led by Adrastus; his son-in-law, Capaneus; and four other princes: Amphiaraus (Adrastus’s brother-in-law), Hippomedon, Parthenopaeus, and Capaneus’s nephew, Tydeus (father of Diomedes). These six princes,

with Polynices, became known as the Seven against Thebes. At the height of the siege where he was in charge of assailing the Electran Gate, Capaneus (reputed to be a giant in stature) was in the act of scaling the walls of Thebes when he boasted that not even Jove could prevent him from taking the city. Jove’s response was to send a thunderbolt that struck Capaneus from the wall and killed him instantly. Dante uses the figure of Capaneus as the representative of blasphemy, a kind of violence against God, in Canto 14 of the INFERNO (ll. 43–75). Drawing mainly on Statius’s Thebaid (10. 872ff.), Dante presents Capaneus as great in stature and unrepentantly arrogant: Lying prone on the burning desert sand, Capaneus scorns the fire that rains down upon him from above and insists that all the

The Alchemists and Forgers, from Canto 29 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National Art-Collections Fund, 1922.

Cardinale, il thunderbolts in Jove’s arsenal could not force him to capitulate to the god’s power. What he was in life, Capaneus says, so he is in death. In Dante’s version Capaneus never repents and never retreats from his blasphemy. Capocchio (d. 1293) Capocchio is one of the alchemists condemned to the bolgia of falsifiers in Canto 29 of Dante’s INFERNO. There the poet first sees him, diseased and covered with scabs, and another alchemist, GRIFFOLINO DA AREZZO, scratching themselves like apes. At the end of the canto, having abused the Sienese with sarcastic humor for several lines (ll. 124–132), Capocchio introduces himself to Dante as an old friend, suggesting that Dante must remember what an effective “ape of nature” he was. Early commentators fill in some of the gaps of this meeting with a few details about Capocchio (though it is always possible that the details are simply extrapolated from Dante’s text). It is likely that Capocchio was a Florentine (some have suggested he was Sienese, but that seems unlikely given his sardonic comments on the Sienese in general), and the commentators say that he was a school friend of Dante’s. Supposedly Capocchio was highly ingenious in many areas: One account says that one Good Friday Dante disturbed Capocchio alone in a religious cell and found that he had depicted the entire story of the passion on his fingernails. When Dante asked what he had done, Capocchio is said to have erased all of his work with his tongue—an act for which Dante chided him, having considered the work so clever and creative. But Capocchio seems to have been famous for his ability to mimic—or “ape”—any person or thing he wished, like a court entertainer. This amusing streak no doubt lay behind Dante’s depiction of Capocchio as a kind of jokester, rattling off oneliners about the stupidity of the Sienese. Later in life, however, Capocchio turned his talent for aping nature to the practice of alchemy, through which he mimicked or falsified true precious metals. As a convicted alchemist he was burned alive in Siena in 1293—an act that would have given his infernal shade little reason to love the Sienese and probably explains his unrelenting ridicule of their city.

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Cardinale, il (“The Cardinal,” Ottaviano degli Ubaldini) (ca. 1210–1275) In Canto 10 of the INFERNO in the circle of the heretics the powerful GHIBELLINE captain FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI identifies some of his fellow sufferers in the burning sarcophagi of circle six. Recalling the Epicurean heresy that flourished during the reign of the emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA of Sicily, Farinata says, “The Second Frederick is here and the Cardinal / is with us” (ll. 119–120). This Cardinal who was so notorious in 13th-century Italy that he could be identified by his title alone is Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, a zealous Ghibelline more given to political intrigue than to the concerns of the church. Ottaviano was made bishop of Bologna in 1240. Because he was not yet 30 at the time, the appointment was arranged through the special dispensation of Pope Gregory IX. Innocent IV then appointed Ottaviano a cardinal in 1244. Despite his Ghibelline (that is, pro-Imperial) politics the cardinal was made papal legate to Lombardy and Romagna, an appointment he held until his death in 1273. The Cardinal may have committed a number of specific sins—monetary, political, and spiritual— during his tenure as bishop and as papal legate, but Dante appears to have focused on one sentence the Cardinal is supposed to have uttered: Having been denied a loan by several fellow Ghibelline partisans, Ottaviano is reputed to have said, “If I have a soul, I have lost it a thousand times for the Ghibellines.” The phrase “if I have a soul” was enough, for Dante, to identify the Cardinal as an Epicurean, denying the immortality of the soul, and so earning the Cardinal a place in Dante’s circle of heretics. Two of the Cardinal’s close relatives also appear in the COMEDY. In Canto 24 of the PURGATORIO Ottaviano’s brother, Ubaldino della Pila, a famous gourmand, moves along “chewing air” for hunger on the terrace of gluttony (l. 28). Better known is Ottaviano’s nephew, Archbishop RUGGIERI DEGLI UBALDINI DELLA PILA, who appears in the depths of Hell in Inferno 33 (l. 14), frozen in the ice while his head is devoured by UGOLINO DELLA GHERARDESCA, whom he had betrayed and starved to death, another victim of Italy’s partisan politics in which the Cardinal took such an active role.

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Casella (d. ca. 1299) In Canto 2 of the PURGATORIO Dante and his guide Virgil stand at the edge of the water at the foot of Mount Purgatory and watch as newly arrived souls disembark from a boat piloted by an angel. Among these Dante recognizes his old friend Casella, a Florentine musician and singer, whom he knows by his voice. In a clear allusion to the second book of Virgil’s AENEID in which Aeneas tries to embrace the shade of his dead wife, Dante tries and fails three times to grasp Casella. He then asks why it has taken his friend so long to arrive at Purgatory. From this it is assumed that Casella must have died several months before the fictional date of Dante’s journey—Easter 1300. Most of what is known about Casella is derived from this canto, though there are a few extant documents that name him as well. One source refers to the singer as “Casella da Pistoia,” so he may have been a native of that city. Another record, dated July 13, 1282, and surviving among documents preserved in Siena, lists a fine assessed from Casella for loitering in the streets at night. One other 13th-century document preserved in the Vatican library is a ballad written by Lemmo da Pistoia on which it is noted that Casella composed the music for the ballad. It is in this capacity that Dante probably knew Casella, who seems to have specialized in setting lyric poems to music. He may have done this with several of Dante’s short poems, for when Dante asks Casella for a song, the musician begins to sing one of Dante’s canzoni (line 112), beginning Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona (“Love, who in my mind discourses”)—a poem Dante uses in Book 3 of the Convivio, though there he interprets it allegorically as pertaining to Lady Philosophy. In this text, though, it suggests a song of earthly love, and Casella’s voice holds Dante and the other new arrivals in rapt attention until CATO OF UTICA, guardian of the entry to Purgatory, disperses them and orders them to begin their climb by running up the mountain. Perhaps in Dante’s text as in life Casella has once again been guilty of loitering. Cassius (Gaius Cassius Longinus) (ca. 85–42 One of the leaders of the conspiracy to assassinate GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR, Cassius was for

B.C.E.)

Dante one of the three greatest sinners in the universe. At the bottom of Hell Dante places Cassius and his coconspirator MARCUS JUNIUS BRUTUS in the jaws of Satan, along with JUDAS ISCARIOT, the betrayer of Christ (Canto 34, ll. 55–69). In Dante’s view Judas deserves his punishment for betraying the highest religious authority, while Brutus and Cassius are guilty of betraying the highest secular authority—one that Dante believed had also been divinely inspired. Cassius had been a quaestor (an official in charge of the treasury) under Marcus Licinius Crassus and in 53 B.C.E. fought with Crassus at the disastrous Battle of Carrhae, in which the Parthians routed the Roman army. Cassius distinguished himself by saving the remnant of the army after the battle. He was tribune for the plebs in 49 B.C.E. when civil war broke out between Pompey and Caesar. He chose to follow Pompey but was forced to surrender to Caesar after Pompey’s decisive defeat at the Battle of Pharsalia. Caesar pardoned him and in 44 B.C.E. even appointed him praetor (a high-ranking magistrate) and promised to appoint him governor of Syria within the year. Despite these favors from Caesar Cassius regarded him as his enemy and set in motion the conspiracy to assassinate him. After the murder of Caesar in the Senate on March 15, 44 B.C.E., Cassius fled to Syria, which he still considered his legitimate province. At Laodicea he defeated and captured Dolabella, on whom the Senate had conferred the Syrian territory. He then moved to Greece to coordinate with the army of Brutus in order to fight Marc Antony and Caesar’s heir, Octavian (the future Caesar Augustus). There at Philippi the armies met in battle. In the first encounter Cassius was defeated by Antony, and Cassius, unaware that Brutus had routed Octavian, assumed all was lost and committed suicide. As a betrayer of his benefactor Caesar Cassius belongs in Dante’s Judecca, the innermost of the bottom circle of Hell. Dante’s description of Cassius has puzzled some readers, however. In line 67 Cassius is described as “sturdy,” though Cassius Longinus was usually described as Shakespeare describes him in the play Julius Caesar—“lean and hungry.” It is likely that Dante is confusing him with another

Cato of Utica Cassius—Lucius Cassius, who is described by MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO in Catiline III as “corpulent.” Catalano dei Malavolti (also called Catalano di Guido di Ostia) (ca. 1210–1285) Catalano was a prominent GUELPH captain born in Bologna in about 1210. In 1249 he is known to have commanded a division of the Bolognese infantry at Fossalta, where FREDERICK II OF SWABIA’s illegitimate son, King Enzio of Sardinia, was defeated and taken prisoner. Afterward Catalano served several cities in Emilia and Lombardy as podesté—a city’s chief executive officer, a post generally given to a noncitizen to prevent conflict between political factions in the city. In 1261 Catalano was instrumental in the founding of a military and religious order in Bologna called the Knights of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Under the patronage of Pope Urban IV the stated goals of the order were to preserve order in Italy, to work for peace between the warring Guelph and GHIBELLINE parties, and to protect the weak, particularly widows and orphans. But the order became notorious for the laxity of its rule, for which it gained the nickname Frati Gaudenti (Jovial Friars). Catalano was associated with another Jovial Friar, the Ghibelline LODERINGO DEGLI ANDALÒ, with whom he twice—in 1265 and again in 1267— shared the position of podestà of Bologna, where they were successful in creating peace between the feuding Guelphs and Ghibellines of that city. Between those appointments Catalano and Loderingo were jointly appointed podestà of FLORENCE, ostensibly because it was believed that if the position were shared between a Guelph and a Ghibelline, both members of a religious order dedicated to the keeping of the peace, then the volatile Florentine political situation could be prevented from erupting into violence. On the contrary, however, the short tenure of Catalano and Loderingo was marked by violence, corruption, and strife, during which the Guelphs gained ascendancy in the city. In a period of violence Guelphs burned to the ground the palaces of several of the wealthier Ghibellines—including those of the Uberti family (among them that of FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI, the noble heretic of INFERNO 10)—in the area near the

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Ponte Vecchio known as the Gardingo. The Ghibellines were expelled from Florence, and Catalano and Loderingo left office after only a few months. After his last term of office in Bologna Catalano retired to a monastery owned by his order in Ronzano, near Bologna. The rest of his life was spent in retirement there, where he died in 1285. Dante places Catalano and his compatriot Loderingo in bolgia six of the eighth circle of Hell, among the hypocrites (Inferno 23). Modern scholars have agreed essentially with Dante’s assessment of corruption and hypocrisy in their tenure in Florence. In fact under the guise of impartiality Pope Clement IV had sent the Jovial Friars into Florence to ensure the overthrow of the Ghibellines and their German mercenaries, who remained the major threat to papal sovereignty after the defeat of Frederick II’s son, MANFRED, at Benevento earlier in 1266. Having taken religious vows, the two Jovial Friars owed their obedience to Pope Clement and worked hypocritically against their stated purposes in order to bring about the pope’s covert aims. Cato of Utica (95 B.C.E.–46 B.C.E.) Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger, known as Cato of Utica, was the great-grandson of the famous moralist Cato the Elder. The young Cato became devoted to Stoic philosophy and gained a reputation for honesty and incorruptibility in public office unsurpassed in the ancient world. His rigid morality against the widespread graft of his times and his refusal to compromise on his principles made him unpopular with some of his colleagues, though they enhanced his posthumous reputation. Cato was elected quaestor (a financial supervisor for the Roman Republic) in 65 B.C.E. and in that role helped reform the Roman treasury. In 63 as tribune he sided with MARCUS TALLIUS CICERO in condemning Catiline and his fellow conspirators (Catiline had conspired to make himself consul by armed force) and calling for their execution. An intractable conservative in politics Cato opposed the political reforms of Crassus, Pompey, and GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR. He even attempted to implicate Caesar in the Catiline conspiracy and as a result was sent to Cyprus in 59 B.C.E. When Caesar’s differences with Pompey erupted into civil war

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in 49 B.C.E., Cato and his aristocratic party sided with Pompey as the lesser of two evils. After Pompey was defeated at Pharsalus in 48, Cato fled to North Africa, where he joined Metellus Pius Scipio to continue the resistance against Caesar and took command of the city of Utica, the second largest in North Africa (25 miles northwest of Carthage). But when Scipio’s forces were crushed in the Battle of Thapsus in 46 B.C.E., only Utica remained free of Caesar’s control. True to his Stoic principles, Cato resolved to commit suicide rather than surrender to a man he considered a tyrant. After spending the night reading PLATO’s Phaedo, on the immortality of the soul, Cato told his followers to make peace with Caesar, then took his life with his own sword. After his death Cato became an idealized hero to those who admired the republic, and a symbol of political integrity for Romans in general. Virgil praised Cato for his devotion to liberty and places him in Elysium as lawgiver to the righteous in the eighth book of the AENEID (l. 670). Cicero justifies Cato’s suicide in De officiis, and LUCAN (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS) lauds his godlike virtue in Pharsalia 2. 380–391. Dante’s admiration for Cato was no doubt influenced by the estimations of these classical writers. Dante praises Cato for his devotion to liberty in DE MONARCHIA 2.5.15 and (although Cato was a pagan and a suicide) makes him the guardian of Purgatory in Canto 1 of the PURGATORIO. It may be that Dante thought of Cato for this latter post because he associated him with freedom: When Virgil addresses Cato in that first canto, he emphasizes the pilgrim Dante’s desire for freedom—the freedom from sin experienced by souls in Purgatory, which the poet Dante seems to see as parallel to the freedom from tyranny sought by Cato. Dante’s highest praise for Cato occurs in the CONVIVIO (4.28). Here Dante recalls a story of Cato related in Lucan’s Pharsalia II, 326ff.: Cato’s second wife, Marcia, was the daughter of the Roman consul Phillippus and the mother of three children by Cato. In 56 B.C.E., however, Cato agreed to release Marcia from her vows and allow her to marry his friend, Hortensius. After Hortensius died, the widow Marcia is supposed to have

pleaded for him to take her back, so that people might not say he had cast her off. Dante discusses this incident as an ALLEGORY of the errant soul’s return to God in old age—thus presenting Cato, who accepts his wife back, as the allegorical symbol of God himself. Cavalcanti, Cavalcante dei (d. ca. 1280) An important member of the influential Cavalcanti family of Florentine GUELPHs, Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti was the father of GUIDO CAVALCANTI, Dante’s “first friend,” as he calls him in the VITA NUOVA. Dante places Cavalcante in the circle of heretics in the INFERNO, where he shares a sepulcher with the renowned GHIBELLINE captain FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI. In 1267 Cavalcante’s son, Guido, had been betrothed to Farinata’s daughter, Beatrice degli Uberti, the marriage an attempt to heal the rift between the two warring factions. Their connection by marriage explains Cavalcante’s sharing Farinata’s tomb, as Cavalcante’s connection with the heresy of Epicureanism explains his presence in this circle. Commenting on this passage, GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO asserted that both Cavalcante and his son Guido were well-known Epicureans, believing that the soul dies with the body and that therefore sensual pleasure was the highest good. Boccaccio’s commentary may, however, simply be an expansion of Dante’s text, rather than informed by any independent tradition. In Canto 10 of the Inferno as Dante is speaking with Farinata, Cavalcante pokes his head above the edge of the sepulcher and asks Dante whether Guido is with him. If the criterion for making this journey through the afterlife is poetic genius, Cavalcante expects his son to have more of a claim to the honor than Dante. Dante answers that he is not alone but is guided by Virgil, whom perhaps Guido “held in scorn” (10, l. 63). (Another possible reading of the line is that Guido held God in scorn—that he was, in effect, a heretic like his father.) Upon hearing the past-tense verb, Cavalcante assumes his son is dead and faints. In fact Guido died in August 1300 of malaria contracted in Sarzana during his exile from FLORENCE. He was still alive in March, the fictional date of the Comedy.

Cavalcanti, Guido 417 Cavalcanti, Francesco dei (late 13th century) One of the “five noble thieves of FLORENCE” consigned by Dante to the seventh bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell, Francesco dei Cavalcanti was a Florentine kinsman of Dante’s “first friend,” GUIDO CAVALCANTI. Francesco, better known by his nickname Guercio (squinting), does not seem to have been notorious as a thief—there is indeed no independent documentary evidence to corroborate Dante’s association of him with the crime of theft. One early document, however, does associate him with Buoso Donati (who may be one of the other noble thieves in Dante’s Canto 25, though there is no consensus about the identity of the “Buoso” mentioned in line 140). This Donati was infamous for his larceny in public office and when his term ended, he advocated the election of Francesco Cavalcanti to replace him. Perhaps then Dante assumes Guercio’s guilt by association. Dante does not identify Guercio by name but rather refers to him as the one who made Gaville mourn (25, l. 151). Gaville was a small town in the valley of the ARNO about 15 miles southeast of Florence. Francesco was murdered by citizens of Gaville, and the powerful Cavalcanti family took swift and terrible revenge, killing and torturing many of the townspeople and decimating the population. Gaville had good reason to mourn because of Francesco Cavalcanti. In the bolgia of thieves as Dante describes it, the sinners’ punishment consists of their constant danger of losing possession of their own bodies. The bolgia is populated by myriad serpents, who perpetually steal the bodies of the shades. The shades are forced to inhabit the serpent’s form until they can attack another sinner and regain a human body. In Canto 25 Guercio first appears as a small snake until he attacks Buoso and steals his human form, taunting him that now he will have to crawl along as Guercio has been forced to. Cavalcanti, Guido (ca. 1255–1300) Cavalcanti was apparently Dante’s closest friend and the bestknown poet of the stilnovist school of Tuscan poetry, named for the DOLCE STIL NOVO (sweet new style). This is the style that influenced Dante’s early poetry but that he transcended in his COMEDY. Cavalcanti’s

influence on Dante and on Italian poetry in general was significant. Fifty-two of his poems are extant, in a variety of genres (but particularly SONNETs and canzoni). His poetic style contrasts with earlier Tuscan poetry of the school of GUITTONE D’AREZZO, which Cavalcanti regarded as too rhetorically complex and artificial. Cavalcanti’s poetry is simpler and more direct in its rhetoric but filled with extremely learned imagery drawn from philosophy, science, psychology, and medicine. Cavalcanti’s famous and influential CANZONE Donna me prega (“A Lady Asks Me”) is a good example of the new direction in love poetry that Cavalcanti introduced and Dante followed early in his career. Cavalcanti claims to be writing at the behest of a lady who wants him to define love, and he asserts his intention to describe where love exists, who created love, what the power of love is, what its effects are, what its pleasures are, and whether it can be seen. The canzone then answers these questions in turn. In answering them the poet conveys three important themes that characterize his poetry in general and that became influential in stilnovist verse: First, love is depicted as a chiefly negative force—Cavalcanti develops an epistemology of love, demonstrating how it becomes destructive because the lover mistakes his lady for the philosophical highest good; second, it is clear that only the truly noble are able to feel or to understand real love; and finally, the imagery with which love is described is drawn largely from scientific and philosophical sources, or from psychological and medical treatises. From these Cavalcanti borrows the notion of “spirits”: Love in Cavalcanti’s poems takes place exclusively in the lover’s mind, and he developed a complicated doctrine of “spirits” existing within the psyche of the lover. Dante takes a number of themes from Cavalcanti, including the exclusive attitude toward love, the doctrine of the “spirits,” and the scientific and psychological imagery. But Dante had no use for Cavalcanti’s view of love as a negative force: For him love was an overwhelmingly positive force, one that was from God and ultimately led one back to him, as it does in the Comedy, where it is Beatrice’s salvific love that leads him to Paradise.

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Celestine V, Pope

Guido Cavalcanti was born into a well-to-do family of Florentine merchants in about 1259 or perhaps earlier. In the political strife between the GUELPHs and the GHIBELLINEs that divided FLORENCE and all of Italy into factions supporting the pope and those supporting the emperor, the Cavalcantis were prominent Guelphs. Guido’s father, CAVALCANTE DEI CAVALCANTI, married his daughter, Bici, to the Ghibelline captain FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI, in order to help seal the shaky peace that had been achieved in the late 1260s. (Dante places Farinata and Cavalcante in the same tomb among the circle of heretics in the INFERNO.) When he reached maturity, Guido himself became an important figure in the municipal politics of Florence. By 1280 he was important enough to be named as a guarantor of the peace treaty that had been negotiated by Cardinal Latini. In 1284 and again in 1290 Guido was elected to the General Council of the Commune of Florence. As the Guelph-Ghibelline rivalry faded, a new political schism rocked Florence, when the Guelph party itself split into a White faction (comprising mainly merchant trade interests and the peace party) and a Black (comprising largely the banking and old money interests, and the interests of the Empire). Cavalcanti, as one of the most influential members of the White party, became the target of political violence and while on pilgrimage barely escaped an assassination attempt that may have been arranged by the Black leader CORSO DONATI (Dante’s wife’s kinsman). Dante seems to have known Guido from at least the early 1280s, about the same time Guido was becoming established in Florentine politics. By then Guido was already, apparently, an accomplished poet, and his new style of poetry, making use of learned philosophical and scientific imagery, strongly influenced Dante’s early work. The two exchanged sonnets on a wide variety of subjects, and when in 1296 Dante completed his first major work, the VITA NUOVA (“New Life”), he dedicated it to Guido, referring to him as primo amico (my first friend). That close friendship, however, was soon strained. In the wake of violent political feuding in the city the six priors of Florence (the ruling

magistrates of the city) met on June 24, 1300, and agreed to exile the leaders of the city’s Black and White factions. Dante, at the time serving a term as prior, was thus compelled to send his best friend into exile. Cavalcanti left Florence for Sarzana, and although his sentence was rescinded a month later, the ailing Cavalcanti never left Sarzana and died in exile in August. Scholars have speculated as to how much Cavalcanti’s exile may have affected his friendship with Dante. In particular the fact that the primo amico of the Vita nuova is barely mentioned in the Comedy is curious. It is possible that Dante broke with Guido over the political violence, though it may be just as likely that Guido resented Dante’s role in his exile. Or perhaps it is simply that by the time he was writing the Comedy Dante had moved beyond Cavalcanti’s influence and therefore felt no need to allude to his previous master. Celestine V, Pope (1215–1296) Pietro Angelieri da Isernia (or Pietro da Morrone), who became Pope Celestine V, was born to humble parents in Moline, a province of Naples. He became a Benedictine monk at the age of 17. His desire to withdraw from the world led him into the wilderness, and in 1239 he became a hermit in a cave at Monte Morrone in the Abruzzi, where he lived an extremely ascetic life of prayer and fasting, wearing a hairshirt and chain of iron. He became well known for his ascetic life and began to attract disciples, so that ultimately there were 600 monks and nuns, comprising 36 religious houses, dedicated to following Pietro’s rule. In 1264 Pope Urban IV officially approved the order (later known by Pietro’s papal name as Celestines) as a branch of the Benedictines. In July 1294 stymied by two years of partisan quarreling after the death of Pope Nicholas IV, the College of Cardinals decided to go outside their own number and unanimously elected Pietro as the new pope, despite the fact that the monk was nearly 80 years old. Pietro had himself crowned at Aquila on August 29 as Pope Celestine V, though almost immediately it became clear that the old man’s simplicity and piety were inadequate compensation for his lack of both education and world-

Cerchi, Vieri de’ liness. King Charles II of Naples attempted to assert undue influence over the old man, while Celestine seemed to appoint new cardinals willy-nilly and on some occasions appointed two or more applicants to the same post. At the same time Celestine himself felt unequal to the task of being pope and also seems to have been concerned that the worldliness necessitated by that highest of offices might actually put his soul in jeopardy. Meanwhile Cardinal Benedetto Caetani, the dominant intellectual of the College of Cardinals, seems to have encouraged Celestine to think about renouncing the papacy. Benedetto convinced Celestine to issue a proclamation declaring that a pope may, for the welfare of his own soul, choose to renounce the papal election, using as his argument the example of Saint Clement, who reputedly refused to accept the succession from the dying SAINT PETER. Once Celestine had issued this proclamation, he had cleared the way for his own abdication, which occurred on December 13, 1294—a little more than five months after his election. Benedetto was immediately elected Celestine’s successor, becoming POPE BONIFACE VIII (the pope Dante saw as the embodiment of all the church’s corruption and whose meddling in secular affairs he considered the cause of most of FLORENCE’s civil strife). Because of this many contemporaries (including Dante) believed that Benedetto/Boniface had persuaded Celestine to abdicate for his own self-serving purposes. There was even a popular rumor that Benedetto had bribed the pope’s attendants and had hidden for three successive nights in Celestine’s bedchamber, pretending to be an angel exhorting him to renounce the papacy for the good of his immortal soul. Such a story is hardly likely, but it is true that rather than allow Celestine to return to his own monastery, Boniface had him placed under guard and confined him to a small cell in the tower of the castle Fumone near Anagni in order to forestall any opposition that Celestine’s supporters might raise to Boniface’s papacy. Celestine died in his cell in May 1296. Most commentators believe that the figure referred to as “the coward who had made the great refusal” in the vestibule of Dante’s Hell (INFERNO 3, l. 60) is in fact Celestine V. The shades in this

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area before the gate of Hell are those who refused to take a stand in life. Because of the nature of their sin Dante gives none of the figures here the dignity of a name, so Celestine’s identity is mere speculation. There are certain difficulties with the identification: Most commentators attribute Celestine’s abdication to genuine humility rather than cowardice, and he is generally regarded as a saintly figure. He was canonized in 1313. It is certainly possible, though, that Dante’s vigorous resentment of Boniface might extend toward Celestine, whose abdication cleared his successor’s rise to power. Cerchi, Vieri de’ (late 13th–early 14th century) Vieri de’ Cerchi was the early 14th-century leader of the once poor Cerchi family who, in 1215, moved to FLORENCE from the nearby village of Acone. They soon profited as merchants and rose as a wealthy and powerful family in Florence. After purchasing the former palace of the Conti Guidi in 1280, they became bitter rivals of their neighbors, the Donati, who were less wealthy but who had a long-established name in Florence. Vieri de’ Cerchi was one of the leaders in the Florentine GUELPHs’ decisive victory over the GHIBELLINEs at the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO on June 11, 1289. Corso Donato and Vieri de’ Cerchi were on the same side in that struggle, but by 1300 the Guelph party had split into the Whites and the Blacks, Vieri de’ Cerchi leading the Whites (the faction with which Dante aligned himself) and CORSO DONATI leading the Blacks. This split caused Florence to become known as “the divided city.” Such tensions resulted in part from each family’s economic background: the Cerchi “nouveau riche” and the Donati of the old blood of Florence. When in the early stages of the conflict that erupted into violence in May 1300 POPE BONIFACE VIII called Vieri de’ Cerchi to Rome in hope of establishing peace between the factions, Vieri de’ Cerchi denied that the Donati were his enemies and returned to Florence. But after repeated disturbances of the peace in Florence and when the leaders of the Blacks sought aid from the pope to overthrow the more prominent Whites, Dante, along with the other priors, banished the leaders of both factions from Florence in summer 1300. The

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Charles Martel

White leaders were subsequently allowed to return, though, when the climate of their place of exile in Sarzana proved too unhealthy. Through the machinations of Pope Boniface, however, the Blacks were restored to power when CHARLES OF VALOIS “pacified” Florence late in 1301, at which point Vieri de Cerchi fled the city, and 600 Whites, including Dante, were exiled from Florence. Dante alludes to the Cerchi in two significant places in the DIVINE COMEDY. First, CIACCO prophesies from the third circle of Hell that “the rustic party / will drive the other out by brutal means” (INFERNO 6, ll. 65–66). The rustic refers to the Whites, specifically to the Cerchi family, who were from the country village of Acone. The Whites did, in fact, expel the Blacks in 1301. But in less than three years as Ciacco predicts (in fact, in just one year), the Blacks regained power (with Boniface’s help) and drove out the Whites. Later in the PARADISO CACCIAGUIDA describes the history of Florence in Canto 16 and laments the fact that the Cerchi ever migrated to Florence from Acone, since it resulted in such strife for the city (l. 65). Paulette Bane Charles Martel (1271–1295) Charles Martel was heir to the thrones of Provence, Naples, and Hungary. He was the eldest son of CHARLES II OF ANJOU, king of Naples, and Mary, daughter of the king of Hungary. Charles Martel’s father had been deposed as king of Sicily by the popular uprising known as the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, though he maintained his lordship over Naples. Charles II was captured by Peter III of Aragon in a sea battle in the Bay of Naples in 1284 and was held for ransom in Spain. When Charles I died in 1286, Charles II was still a prisoner, and Charles Martel was appointed regent at the age of 15. In 1287 Charles Martel married Clemence of Hapsburg, the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf I. The couple had three children. Charles II was released in 1288, sending his three younger sons to Spain as hostages. Charles Martel was created vicar of the realm in 1289 and made titular king of Hungary in 1290. In 1294 Charles Martel is known to have visited FLORENCE, where he and his impressive retinue were warmly received

for the 20 days of their stay. Here he became acquainted with Dante and seems to have been impressed by the young Florentine’s poetry and intellect and, according to some sources, promised him future patronage. That promise never materialized, as the young heir died of cholera the following year. Dante depicts Charles Martel in the eighth canto of the PARADISO. Here among the amorous in the sphere of Venus he approaches the pilgrim while singing the first line of Dante’s poem “O you whose intellect spins Heaven’s third sphere,” the first CANZONE in Dante’s CONVIVIO. The poem must have caught the young prince’s attention when he visited Florence in 1294. In their conversation in Paradise Charles Martel implies that events would have gone far better for Dante if he had lived. Charles Martel also warns that his brother, ROBERT OF ANJOU, KING OF NAPLES, who inherited the throne of Naples from their father in 1309, will need to learn to be less miserly and complains that Robert is a stingy branch from a generous root. In this he seems to refer to their grandfather, Charles I of Anjou, since in Canto 20 of the PURGATORIO it is suggested that Charles II will spend time in the round of the avaricious (ll. 79–84). Charles Martel himself seems to be presented as an ideal ruler, one who would have ruled through love. Charles of Anjou (Charles I) (1226–1285) Charles I was the Angevin king of Naples and Sicily, having wrested the kingdom from its Hohenstaufen king MANFRED, the illegitimate son of the Holy Roman Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA. Charles was the seventh son of King Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile, and hence the younger brother of Saint Louis (Louis IX). In 1246 Charles was made count of Anjou and Maine, and in the same year his marriage to Beatrice, daughter of Count Raymond Berenger IV of Provence, ensured his sovereignty over that region as well upon the count’s death. In 1248 he joined his brother the king on the Seventh Crusade. Though he fought gallantly, he lacked Louis’s piety, and according to one source the king chastised him for gambling on the ship from Egypt to Acre. When in 1250 Charles left the crusade and returned to France, he found

Charles of Anjou Provence in open rebellion. He moved to crush the rebels in Avignon and Arles, but Marseille held out against him until 1252, finally surrendering and agreeing to recognize Charles’s authority. Beginning about 1254 Pope Innocent IV approached Charles about becoming king of Sicily. Innocent wanted to separate Sicily from the Holy Roman Empire and the Hohenstaufen family. King Louis dissuaded Charles at that time. But as the relationship between Manfred and Innocent’s successors deteriorated, and Manfred was excommunicated, Charles became more interested in the proposition. In 1263 he agreed to a treaty with Pope Urban IV that would make him king of Sicily—in exchange he had to agree that Sicily would never be reunited with the Empire, and that he would not intervene in church business in Sicily. In 1265 after the new pope Clement IV had promised to honor Urban’s treaty, Charles marched into Italy. His army was said to be funded in part by his wife, Beatrice, who pledged her jewels to finance the operation that would make her a queen. Charles was crowned king of Sicily and Apulia on January 6, 1266, in Rome and immediately headed south from there to encounter Manfred. Although Manfred sought to negotiate with Charles, Charles is said to have responded, “Either I will send him to Hell, or he will send me to Paradise.” He met Manfred at Benevento on February 26 and destroyed his army, killing Manfred himself in the process. Charles now ruled in Naples and Sicily unopposed. But the unpopular French presence led the Sicilians to appeal to Conradin, the heir of the Hohenstaufen Conrad IV (Frederick II’s legitimate son), to claim his rightful throne and throw out the French. When Conradin marched into Naples in August 1268, he was met and destroyed by Charles’s smaller force at Tagliacozzo. Conradin fled, but he was apprehended and ultimately executed in the marketplace at Naples on October 29. With Conradin’s death the Hohenstaufen cause was ended in Italy. Charles now conceived the plan of reestablishing the Latin Empire in the Middle East. He first subdued several Greek islands and planned to march on Constantinople, but his brother’s initiation of the Eighth Crusade in 1270, focused on Tunis,

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interrupted his plans. Charles arrived in Tunis on August 25 to find that Louis had died that morning of dysentery. Charles took command of the crusade and won a few skirmishes, but illness and weather defeated the crusaders, and Charles postponed his designs on Constantinople. Over the next several years, though, he continued to expand his realm eastward, becoming king of Albania in 1272. As time went on the people of Sicily continued to chafe under French rule, and Charles was widely viewed as a tyrant. During the Easter holiday in Palermo in 1282, an uprising broke out. The uprising was provoked immediately by a French soldier’s insult of a Sicilian girl but had been fomented, reportedly, by Pope Innocent III and Paleologus, emperor of Constantinople. The Italians massacred the French occupiers. The rising, known as the Sicilian Vespers, was successful in ousting the French forces from the island of Sicily, so that Charles’s Angevin kingdom then comprised only Naples. The Sicilians invited Pedro III of Aragon to become the new king of Sicily—as the grandson of Manfred, Pedro had a legitimate claim to the throne. Charles, shocked by developments in Sicily, made several unsuccessful attempts to regain the island and died planning another invasion on January 7, 1285. Identifying him as the one with the large nose, Dante places Charles in the Valley of Princes, among the negligent rulers in Canto 7 of the PURGATORIO. Here he shares space with his old enemy, Pedro III, as both wait for their chance (as late repentant sinners) to begin their ascent of the mountain. Later in the Purgatorio HUGH CAPET accuses Charles of Anjou of slaying Conradin (of which he was certainly guilty) and of murdering SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS—here Dante follows an unfounded legend that Charles poisoned Thomas (Purgatorio 20, ll. 67–69). In the PARADISO CHARLES MARTEL (Charles’s grandson) asserts that his descendants would still rule in Sicily if it had not been for Charles of Anjou’s evil rule, which drove the citizens of Palermo to cry death to the French (Paradiso 8, ll. 67–72). Dante’s point here, as in the case of other inhabitants of Purgatory, including Manfred himself, seems to be that God’s grace is sufficient to save even as inveterate a sinner as Charles, so long as his repentance is heartfelt.

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Charles of Valois

Charles of Valois (Charles de Valois) (1270– 1325) Charles of Valois was the third son of France’s King Philip III. He was the brother of PHILIP IV THE FAIR and the father of the future King Philip VI. In 1284 after the excommunication of Peter III of Aragon the 14-year-old Charles was named king of Aragon by Pope Martin IV. When some years later his unsuccessful attempt to claim the throne failed, he renounced his claim. In 1290 he married Margaret, eldest daughter of CHARLES II OF ANJOU, becoming count of Anjou and Maine as part of the marriage agreement. With Margaret he had four daughters and two sons, the older of whom was to become Philip VI. For Dante Charles of Valois’s most notorious act was initiated by the invitation of POPE BONIFACE VIII. In 1300 Boniface called Charles to Italy in order to support Charles II against the claims of Frederick II of Aragon for the throne of Naples and Sicily. Boniface also purportedly wanted Charles to make peace between the squabbling Black and White factions in FLORENCE. In return for his efforts Boniface promised to use his influence to have Charles elected Holy Roman Emperor. Turning first to Florence, Charles marched into the city on All Saints’ Day, 1301, promising to keep the peace and treat both parties fairly. But having secured control of the city, he turned Florence over to the Blacks. He allowed the exiled Black leader CORSO DONATI into the city and stood by while Corso and his followers emptied the prisons and rampaged through the city, burning and looting the houses of the Whites for five riotous days. All Whites were ultimately expelled from the city in 1302, and Dante sentenced specifically to permanent exile. By now it was clear that Charles had simply been following Boniface’s true plan for the city—to turn it over to his supporters, the Blacks. In the COMEDY Dante alludes many times to Boniface’s treachery in Florence, but only once does he specifically mention Charles by name. In Canto 20 of the PURGATORIO HUGH CAPET (speaking of his descendants with shame) foretells the future, when Charles will enter Italy carrying the lance of JUDAS ISCARIOT, with which he “bursts the guts of Florence with one thrust” (ll. 73–75).

His work in Florence accomplished, Charles now turned his attention to Sicily. Despite landing with a large army, Charles was not able to combat the guerrilla-style attacks of Frederick II and his followers and ultimately was constrained to sign a treaty granting Frederick possession of Sicily and agreeing to a marriage between Frederick and Eleanor, daughter of Charles II. Charles of Valois returned to France in November 1302 with nothing to show for his expedition to Italy and now known by the nickname Carlo Sanzaterra (Charles Lackland). But by 1301 Charles had married his second wife, Catherine of Courtenay, daughter of the titular emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, Philip I of Courtenay, and heiress to that throne. Although Charles attempted to push his claim as Byzantine emperor through his marriage, he was unsuccessful in this as well. When his brother, Philip IV, died in 1314, Charles was able to dominate the short reign of his nephew, Louis X, and hoped to be named regent upon Louis’s death in 1316. That honor, however, went to Louis’s brother, Philip V, who proclaimed himself king after the death of Louis’s infant son, John. Although Charles himself was never king— though he had tried in his life to obtain the crowns of Aragon, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and Constantinople—when he died in 1325, he left a son who in 1328 would establish a new line of French kings, the Valois monarchy, which would rule France until 1589. Ciacco (13th century) The character whom Dante calls “Ciacco” appears in the third circle of Hell, in Canto 6 of the INFERNO. Very few facts are known about this figure. We do not even know whether Ciacco is the character’s real name or whether it is serving, as it sometimes did, as a nickname for Giacomo. The word itself means “hog,” or could also be used as an adjective meaning “swinish” or “filthy,” and certainly a character with such a name seems to belong in the circle of Hell reserved for the gluttons. The text offers little information about Ciacco. He was a Florentine and a contemporary of Dante’s and seems to have known him—Dante seems to recognize him and feels pity for his suffer-

Cicero, Marcus Tullius ing. Some commentators have suggested that the historical Ciacco was a minor poet named Ciacco del’Anguillaia, with whom Dante is likely to have been acquainted though his poetry. He may be the same Ciacco who appears in the eighth story of the ninth day of GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO’s Decameron, where he is called the world’s greatest glutton, and is a witty and charming courtier. Either Boccaccio’s character is based on Dante’s, or both are based on a common tradition, possibly concerning the poet. Dante’s Ciacco performs an important function in the Inferno, since Dante chooses him to deliver the first of several political prophecies in the poem. In language reminiscent of biblical prophets Ciacco implies that the White and Black parties will be in conflict, that the Whites will expel the Blacks, but that the Blacks will return within three years with the support of one who “hesitates”—that is, POPE BONIFACE VIII. Dante learns that all of the dead can see into the future, and he continues to receive prophecies that become more and more personal until all come into focus with his ancestor CACCIAGUIDA in Paradise. Cicero, Marcus Tullius (104–43 B.C.E.) Cicero was famous as a philosopher, orator, and statesman, and Dante was much influenced by him, citing his works more than 30 times (mostly in the CONVIVIO, Dante’s “banquet” of philosophy for the common reader). Cicero appears in INFERNO 4, l. 141, where he is mentioned among the illustrious souls of antiquity populating Virgil’s home in Limbo. The historical Cicero had studied philosophy in Athens and Rhodes as well as Rome and was made praetor of Rome in 66 B.C.E. and then consul in 63 B.C.E., the highest elected office in the Roman Republic. He survived the Catiline conspiracy, purportedly hatched by his political rival, the discontented patrician Catiline, to overthrow the government, and (having persuaded the Senate to declare martial law) ordered the execution of five members of the conspiracy, despite the young GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR’s opposition to the executions. The legality of this order was later questioned by Cicero’s enemies, particularly Clodius, and in 58 B.C.E. Cicero was sent into exile. Pompey, however,

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recalled Cicero the following year and welcomed him back to Rome as a hero. Cicero was appointed governor of Cilicia in 51 B.C.E., and when civil war broke out, he supported Pompey against Caesar. After his victory Caesar pardoned Cicero, who returned to Rome. After Caesar’s assassination in 44 B.C.E. Cicero’s enmity with Marc Antony surfaced, and after Antony condemned Cicero in the Senate, Cicero responded by delivering the speech known as the First Philippic—a speech attacking Antony’s policies and extolling the republic. Antony replied with invective against Cicero in the Senate, accusing him of being the chief mover of the plot to murder Caesar. Cicero fled to his villa near Naples, where he wrote the Second Philippic, a further attack on Antony, which was never spoken but the text of which was sent to MARCUS JUNIUS BRUTUS and CASSIUS (GAIUS CASSIUS LONGINUS). In 43 B.C.E. Caesar’s heir, Octavian (the future Augustus), returned to Rome and formed the Second Triumvirate with Antony and Lepidus. Though he opposed the action at first, Octavian was ultimately persuaded by Antony to sentence Cicero to death. Cicero was executed on December 7, 43 B.C.E. Among Cicero’s better-known works are De officiis (“On Duties,” 44 B.C.E.), which Dante cites some six times in the Convivio and five more times in DE MONARCHIA; De finibus, bonorum et malorum (“On the Ends of Good and Evil,” 45 B.C.E.), cited three times in the Convivio and once in De monarchia; De amicitia (“On Friendship,” 44 B.C.E.), cited twice in the Convivio; and De senectute (“On Old Age,” 44 B.C.E.), cited six times in the Convivio. Dante seems to have been aware of Cicero’s Catiline orations, since his description of Cassius in Inferno 34, l. 67, seems influenced by Cicero’s description of a different Cassius in the oration In Catilinam 3.7. Finally, Dante’s description of the pilgrim looking down upon the paltry earth from the highest Heaven in PARADISO 22, ll. 151–153, is probably based on Scipio’s dream in the sixth book of Cicero’s De re publica (“The Republic,” 51 B.C.E.), though Dante probably knew Cicero’s text through the intermediary of Macrobius’s fourthcentury commentary.

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Cimabue, Giovanni

Cimabue, Giovanni (Cenni de Pepo) (ca. 1240– ca. 1302) Giovanni or Cenni de Pepo, nicknamed Cimabue (i.e., Oxhead) was, according to Dante, the most admired Florentine painter of his time. Dante mentions Cimabue in Canto 11 of the PURGATORIO, where, in a passage concerned with the transience of worldly fame, the artist ODERISI OF GUBBIO says that Cimabue once believed he held supremacy in painting but now had been eclipsed by the fame of GIOTTO DI BONDONE (ll. 94–96). Ironically this particular passage has essentially been the basis for Cimabue’s own subsequent reputation, for there are virtually no other documents attesting to his preeminence as a painter. Cimabue is known to have been in Rome in 1272, when his name appears as a witness on an ecclesiastical document—a fact that suggests he already was a figure of some prominence at that time. Another document confirms that he was working on the apse of the cathedral in PISA in 1301. But no extant documents refer to any specific surviving work of Cimabue’s; therefore there is no definitive agreement as to which works are his. Works usually attributed to him are a large crucifix panel from the Church of SAINT DOMINIC in AREZZO (from about 1275), the figure of SAINT JOHN THE APOSTLE in a larger mosaic in the cathedral in Pisa (from about 1302, and hence possibly his last work), and a number of frescoes—most notably one of the Madonna and child with angels and SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI—in the Upper Church of Saint Francis in Assisi (executed between 1277 and 1280). Another crucifix supposed to be Cimabue’s, in FLORENCE’s Santa Croce, was badly damaged by a flood in 1966 but was partially restored in 1985 and may now be viewed in the museum in Santa Croce. Other stories of Cimabue are probably apocryphal, or are at least unverifiable. Giorgio Vasari, who wrote The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects more than 200 years after Cimabue’s death, depicts Cimabue as passionate and arrogant and claims that because he could not bear to have his work criticized, he would destroy one of his paintings if he or anyone else found fault with it. Further Vasari says it was his obstinacy that earned him the nickname Oxhead. But we have no

source for these anecdotes other than Vasari himself. It is also assumed that Cimabue was Giotto’s teacher, but that common assumption is merely inferred from Dante’s comment that Giotto’s reputation had superseded Cimabue’s own. The usual assessment of Cimabue is that he essentially followed the Byzantine style of painting but that he was one of the painters responsible for moving toward a greater naturalism in the depiction of human figures, giving them more individuality and dimensionality than had been common before and thus influencing the greater realism of Giotto and Italian painters of the early Renaissance. Cino da Pistoia (ca. 1270–ca. 1337) Cino da Pistoia (full name Guittoncino di ser Francesco de’ Sinibaldi of Pistoia) was a well-known jurist and poet, known and admired by Dante. While in its psychological picture of love Cino’s poetry shows some influence of the DOLCE STIL NOVO (the sweet new style) of the circle of Dante and GUIDO CAVALCANTI, Cino’s most admired lyrics are distinguished by their personal element. Best known among these are his CANZONE addressed to Dante regarding the death of Beatrice and his lyrics expressing grief over the loss of Cino’s own beloved lady, Selvaggia. Cino was born to a wealthy family in the Tuscan city of Pistoia, 30 kilometers northwest of FLORENCE. Like Dante, Cavalcanti, and others of the time, Cino became involved in the tumultuous political climate. A member of the Black GUELPH party Cino was exiled from Pistoia from 1303 to 1306. While in exile in Bologna, he renewed his acquaintance with the expatriate Dante and over the next few years exchanged SONNETs with him. Cino was allowed to return to Pistoia in 1306, where, as did his friend Dante, he became a supporter of the Holy Roman Emperor HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG. He studied law in Pistoia and then at Bologna, the premier university for legal studies in Europe, from which he received a doctorate in 1314. He went on to teach law himself, at Treviso (1318), Siena (1321), Florence (1324), Perugia (1326), and Naples (1330). Cino had become a celebrated jurist, authoring a number of legal treatises and becoming particularly admired for his Lectura in codicem or “Readings

Clement V, Pope in the Codex” (published in 1314), an influential commentary on the first nine books of JUSTINIAN I’s law code. Cino was named an honorary citizen of Florence in 1324, and he returned in 1333 to his native Pistoia, where he held a number of civil posts and died in about 1337. He was buried in the cathedral in Pistoia. Dante’s admiration for Cino’s poetry is expressed particularly in his DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA, in which he quotes from three of Cino’s poems. He mentions Cino in several other places in the text, arguing that Cino’s canzoni (along with Dante’s own) are illustrations of the excellence of the vulgar tongue (1.7.3) and holding Cino up as the exemplary poet of love (2.2.9). FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) PETRARCH, who also knew Cino personally, admired him as well, particularly for his personal voice and his poetry of grief. Petrarch extols Cino in a canzone and also wrote a sonnet on his death. Clement V, Pope (ca. 1264–1314) One of the contemporary popes Dante assigns to the eighth circle of Hell, Clement V was considered, during his own time, to be essentially the puppet of King PHILIP IV THE FAIR of France and is remembered chiefly for moving the seat of the papacy to Avignon. Born Bertrand de Got in Gascony, Clement began his ecclesiastical career as a canon at the Church of Saint André in Bordeaux, after which he became vicar-general under his brother, who was archbishop of Lyons. In 1294 his brother was made cardinal bishop of Albano and doubtlessly through this brother’s influence Bertrand was consecrated bishop of St-Bertrand-de-Comminges. Here he gained the favor of POPE BONIFACE VIII, who made him his chaplain and appointed him archbishop of Bordeaux. He maintained Boniface’s trust while remaining friendly with Philip IV—no small feat, since the pope and the king were bitter enemies. When Boniface’s successor, the short-lived Benedict XI, died after scarcely a year in the Holy See, 11 months passed before another pope was elected, chiefly because of bickering between French and Italian factions among the cardinals. On June 5, 1305, a majority of cardinals voted to make Bertrand pope. Rumor had it that in exchange for

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Philip’s support for his election, Bertrand had made a number of concessions to the king. In any case he took the name of Clement V and decided to be crowned on November 14, not in Rome but in the French city of Lyons. Philip attended the coronation, and one of Clement’s first acts was the creation of nine new French cardinals. Clement was also quick to issue statements mitigating some of the provisions of two of Boniface’s bulls—Clericis laicos (1296) and Unam sanctum (1302)—that had particularly incurred Philip’s wrath: the first with its aggressive stance against unnamed “sovereigns” who misappropriated money intended for the church, the second with its bald assertion that every human being on earth was subject to the Roman pontiff. The new pope followed this by joining Philip in an attack on the powerful Knights Templar. The Knights Templar, originally a crusading order formed in 1118 in the aftermath of the First Crusade, had by the late 13th century become extremely wealthy through banking activities. It was apparently a desire to control their wealth that led Philip the Fair to accuse the order of heresy and, in 1307, to have all the Templars in France arrested and their assets seized, ultimately torturing them into admissions of heresy within the order. Pressured to follow the king’s lead, Clement began an investigation into the charges against the order, bringing the case to a general council of the church at Vienne in 1311. Although the council found no evidence of heretical practices and recommended the continuance of the order, Clement made an apostolic decree on March 22, 1312, ordering the dissolution of the Order of the Knights Templar. Clement actually refused to yield to Philip on two issues. One of these involved the reputation of Philip’s old enemy and Clement’s old master, Boniface VIII. Philip pressured Clement to declare Boniface a heretic, and Clement did convene a trial in Avignon, beginning February 2, 1309, to examine the orthodoxy of his predecessor. In the course of the two-year trial Clement expressed his own conviction of Boniface’s innocence, and ultimately Philip agreed to defer the matter to the Council of Vienne in 1311. Boniface was not convicted—saving the papacy itself from a devastating

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blow—but Clement meanwhile agreed to pardon Philip’s underlings who had abducted Boniface at Anagni in 1303. The other issue on which Philip and Clement clashed was Clement’s support for the election and coronation of HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG as Holy Roman Emperor. Clement’s legates crowned Henry at Rome in 1312, though Clement subsequently condemned Henry’s campaign in Italy before the Emperor’s early death in Siena in 1313. It was in 1309 after residing in different locations in France that Clement determined to settle his administration in Avignon. At the time the move of the papal seat from Rome was justified by the political unrest in that city. But the papal curia remained in Avignon for more than 70 years, a situation FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) PETRARCH referred to as the “Babylonian Captivity.” Clement’s court at Avignon had a reputation of corruption so base that the early commentator Villani claimed that in his court one could buy any benefice for money. Clement died in Avignon on April 20, 1314, having never once left France. Dante saw Clement V as a vile and corrupt pontiff. In the third bolgia of his Inferno’s circle eight, the hell of the simoniacs, Dante depicts a conversation with POPE NICHOLAS III, stuck headfirst into a fiery parody of a baptismal font. Nicholas predicts that Boniface VIII will eventually replace him in this particular torment, and that Boniface will himself be replaced by Clement V. Nicholas describes Clement as “another Jason,” alluding to the priest in 2 Maccabees 4.17 ff. who buys his way into the priesthood and, to please the Greek King Antiochus, introduces pagan rites into the Temple in Jerusalem, thereby touching off the Maccabean revolt. It is not known whether Clement was still alive when Dante wrote the lines consigning him to Hell (Canto 19, ll. 82–87), but it would certainly be an audacious move to charge a sitting pope so publicly with the sin of simony.

without using Guido’s name, calling him Iudex de Columpnis de Messana or Iudex de Messana. Dante cites Guido as an example of the Sicilian style and admires his polished verse and the judge’s exercise of reason over passion. Guido was best known not for his poetry but for his history of Troy, Historia destructionis Troiae, which was reportedly commissioned by the archbishop of Palermo and became highly popular in the Middle Ages. The Historia comprises 34 books, the first of which was written in 1272. Guido broke off working on his text when he traveled to England with Edward I, who was returning home from a crusade upon the death of his father, HENRY III OF ENGLAND. Guido’s history saw completion in November 1287 and subsequently was responsible for passing on the story of Troy through the medieval centuries: It served as a source for GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO’s Il filostrato (1335–36) and thus indirectly for Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (1385). Caxton printed a translation of Guido’s history in 1476 (making it the first book printed in English), and Shakespeare, too, was familiar with his work. Guido claimed his history was based on the firsthand accounts of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian in their histories De excidio Troiae and De bello Troiano. In fact his text is primarily a translation of the 12th-century French Roman de Troie (ca. 1160) of Benôit de Sainte-Maure. But Guido’s history was widely accepted for what he claimed it to be. It retained this reputation until the 18th century, when its “sources” were exposed as fraudulent. The dates of Guido della Colonne’s birth and death are uncertain; he was probably born between 1210 and 1215. One English source claims that he was alive during Nicholas IV’s term as pope (1288–92), and it is certain that he was still living in 1287, when the final volumes of his history appeared.

Colonne, Guido delle (ca. 1210–1290) Guido della Colonne was a Messina judge and a poet of the Sicilian school, popularized by GIACOMO DA LENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINI, “THE NOTARY”). Dante quotes two of Guido’s canzoni in DE VULGARI

Constance, Empress (1152–1198) Queen of Sicily and Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, the daughter of the Sicilian king Roger II, she married Emperor Henry VI of the Holy Roman Empire and bore him a son, FREDERICK II OF SWABIA. She is

ELOQUENTIA

Jeanette Holland

Constantine the Great thus also the grandmother of MANFRED, the chief figure in Canto 3 of the PURGATORIO. Upon the death of her nephew, William II in 1189, Constance asserted her claim to the throne of Sicily. However, Tancred of Lecce, her illegitimate nephew, also laid claim to the throne. Civil strife ensued as Tancred assumed the throne with the support of those who opposed the Germanic rule of Henry VI. At one point Tancred even took his aunt Constance as a hostage, but the pope convinced him to free her. Henry was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1191 but was unable to force Tancred from the Sicilian throne. After the death of Tancred in 1194, however, Constance and Henry VI attained the Sicilian Crown, though the German Henry was never popular with the Sicilians. With the death of Henry VI in 1197 Constance was left alone to protect her four-yearold son’s claim to the throne. Unable to manage the internal opposition of Sicilian nobility, she sought the protection of the papacy, who saw this as an opportunity to reestablish papal supremacy over Sicily. In 1198 Pope Innocent III crowned Frederick II king of Sicily. Constance died just a few months after her son’s coronation in November 1198. According to popular belief in Dante’s time, which has since been proved fictitious, Constance was a nun until the age of 30, when she was forced from her convent against her will and coerced into a political marriage with Henry VI. As Constance did not willingly break her vows by entering into marriage of her own free will and choice, she is said to have remained faithful and true to her conventual oaths in her heart. Dante places Constance in Heaven because of her conviction, though in the Heaven of the Moon, among those who broke their oaths (PARADISO 3, ll. 118–120). Paul Lewis Constantine the Great (ca. 288–337) Flavius Valerius Constantinus, later the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, was emperor of Rome from 306 until his death in May 337. Known and revered in the Middle Ages as the first Christian emperor, Constantine appears in Dante’s COMEDY among the just rulers in Canto 20 of the PARADISO, where he

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joins other just rulers—including KING DAVID and TRAJAN—to form the eye of the Imperial eagle. Constantine was born in Naissus (now Ni in modern-day Serbia), the son of Constantius I and Helena (who legend holds discovered the true cross). His father served as caesar (or subemperor) under Diocletian, and upon the retirement of Diocletian and Maximian in 305, Constantius and Galerius (the other subemperor) became coemperors of the Western and Eastern Empires. A year later, however, Constantius died in Britain, and Constantine, who had been accompanying his father, was proclaimed emperor by the Roman troops in York on July 25. In Rome, however, a power struggle ensued upon Constantius’s death. Maximian wanted his son Maxentius to be emperor, while Galerius supported Severus. Ultimately Maximian defeated Galerus and Severus, and Constantine accepted the appointment as subemperor, marrying Maximian’s daughter, Fausta. Ultimately Maximian attempted to regain the throne but was defeated by Constantine in 310 and committed suicide. When Galerus also died, Constantine declared himself emperor. He defeated Maxentius at Milvian Bridge near Rome in 312. According to the early Christian historian Eusebius, Constantine is said to have seen a fiery sign of the cross in the sky before the battle, with the words “In this sign conquer.” In 313 in Milan Constantine met with Licinius, who had been appointed by Galerus as emperor of the East. They issued what became known as the Edict of Milan, a proclamation that gave Christianity the status of a legal religion throughout the empire. Subsequently, however, Licinius engaged in a power struggle with Constantine, in 315 losing control of Greece and the Balkans to him. In 324 Constantine renewed the rivalry, ultimately defeating Licinius at Chrysopolis, thus winning control of the entire Eastern Empire. Finally Constantine had Licinius killed when the latter continued to conspire against him even from prison. While Constantine always tolerated paganism and the cult of the emperor, he saw the significance of Christianity within the empire and tried to regulate it, convening the Council of Nicaea in 325 mainly to deal with the Arian heresy. In 330 he

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moved the imperial capital to Byzantium, which he rebuilt as the city of Constantinople. Having reunified the empire under a single ruler, he chose to divide it again upon his death among his three surviving sons, who became Constantine II, Constantius II, and Constans I, and whose rivalry created great turmoil in the wake of their father’s death. Constantine’s legacy as a “Christian emperor” is much debated by historians. His many legal reforms were often humanitarian in intent and thus may have been influenced by Christian ideals. But some historians see him as a political opportunist who used the popularity of the new religion to help him unify the empire. It does seem, however, that his conversion was genuine, at least ultimately, since he was baptized (by Eusebius) on his deathbed. For Dante and the rest of Western Christendom in the later Middle Ages, though, Constantine’s conclusive conversion was a matter of indisputable historical fact, underscored emphatically by the so-called Donation of Constantine, a document in which Constantine is purported to have given POPE SYLVESTER I and all of his heirs in the papal office absolute secular power over all of the Western Empire, in gratitude for the pope’s having cured Constantine of leprosy by washing him in holy water (thus the move to Byzantium was seen as Constantine’s giving up control of the West to the pope). In the Comedy nearly every time Dante refers to Constantine, he alludes negatively to the Donation. In INFERNO 19 Dante calls Constantine the begetter of evil “by the dower / that the first wealthy Father got from you!” (ll. 115–117). In the Paradiso Dante says that Constantine’s “good intentions bore the worst of fruits” (20, l. 57). For Dante the Donation is the event that began the corruption of the church, introducing the desire for worldly goods and power into what should be a spiritual institution. Dante saw the empire as ordained by God as the vehicle of temporal peace. He therefore spends a good portion of DE MONARCHIA arguing that the Donation of Constantine was not valid, since the church was forbidden by Christ’s own command in Matthew 10.9 (“Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts”) not to seek temporal riches. When a more critical attitude toward scholarship emerged in the Renaissance, the Donation was

examined closely by the humanist scholar Lorenzo Valla, who in 1440 (on the basis of an analysis of its language) demonstrated that the Donation was a ninth-century forgery. Certainly Dante would have rejoiced at this news had it come during his lifetime. Cunizza da Romano (ca. 1198–1279) One of the more scandalous women of 13th century Italy whom Dante nevertheless places in Paradise in his COMEDY, Cunizza da Romano was the youngest daughter of Ezzelino II, count of Onora, and Adelaide di Mangona. She was thus the sister of the GHIBELLINE Ezzelino III da Romano, tyrant of the March of Treviso and the chief Ghibelline in northern Italy, whose reputation for cruelty was so widespread that he earned the nickname “son of Satan.” Dante places Ezzelino III in circle seven of Hell, with the violent against their neighbors (INFERNO 12, l. 110). In 1222 the 24-year-old Cunizza was wed in a politically convenient marriage to Count Ricardo di San Bonifazio, a GUELPH captain, but she soon was attracted to the troubadour SORDELLO (whom we meet in Canto 6 of Dante’s PURGATORIO). In 1226 with the encouragement of her brother, Ezzelino, she abandoned her husband in VERONA and fled with Sordello to Ezellino’s court. Subsequently once the affair with Sordello had cooled, she was sent for safekeeping to Treviso to the court of another brother, Alberico—where, for a time, she renewed her romance with Sordello. At Alberico’s court Cunizza met and fell in love with a knight named Bonio, with whom she is said to have escaped her brother and to have abandoned herself to a life of pleasure. But the affair with Bonio was short-lived, as he was killed in battle defending Treviso from an assault by Ezzelino, who had quarreled with his brother. From this point on Cunizza appears to have been largely a political pawn in three additional marriages. Ezzelino arranged for her to marry Aimerio, the count of Breganze, but the count died shortly after having fallen out with Ezzelino. Cunizza then married a gentleman of Verona, who also died, allowing her to wed Ezzelino’s astrologer, Salione Buzzacarini of Padua.

Cunizza da Romano Early commentators on Dante’s Comedy say that in her later years Cunizza became well known for her acts of mercy and generosity. In 1260 when her fourth husband and both of her brothers were dead and her family fortunes had reached their lowest point, Cunizza decided to move to FLORENCE, where she seems to have become acquainted with the Cavalcanti family. In 1265 the year of Dante’s birth in the house of CAVALCANTE DEI CAVALCANTI (father of GUIDO CAVALCANTI, the famous poet and friend of Dante), Cunizza signed a document freeing all of her brothers’ and father’s slaves. In 1279 at the age of 80 she wrote her will, leaving all of her possessions to surviving members of her mother’s family of Mangona: Counts Alessandro and Napoleone—two brothers who ultimately killed each other in a fight over their father’s estate, and whom Dante places in the depths of Hell, with the treacherous against family (Inferno 32, ll. 55–60). Dante meets Cunizza in the sphere of Venus in Paradise (PARADISO 9, ll. 19–63). It is not com-

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pletely clear why Dante places Cunizza among the blessed rather than in Purgatory, unless her reputation for good deeds suggested true contrition and made her an appropriate beneficiary of God’s grace. When she speaks to Dante, she explains that her fate has been determined by Venus and the carnal desire inspired by that planet, but she feels no regret because God’s forgiveness has obliterated remorse and left only a feeling of thankfulness to him. She goes on to make a prophecy concerning the defeat of the Paduans by Dante’s patron CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA in 1314, and another concerning the duplicitous bishop of Feltre, who, having extended his protection to a group of Ghibellines seeking refuge, ultimately turned them over to the authorities for execution. Cunizza’s connection with these events is apparently simply her having lived in that region. But she concludes by a reference to the angelic order of Thrones, who direct the sphere of Saturn and reflect the judgment of God on misdeeds such as these.

D David, King (ca. 1040–970 B.C.E.) The most often-mentioned personage in the Old Testament, David was the second king of the united Israel. The successor of King Saul, David was a famed warrior who reigned for about 40 years, according to the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles, which record the events of his reign. An accomplished poet and musician, David was also the purported author of many of the Psalms. Although the Bible records a number of occasions of David’s offending the Lord, for the most part his life was an example of a flawed human being seeking a relationship with God. He is generally regarded as the most righteous king of Israel, and in 2 Samuel 7.12–16 God promises that David’s line will endure forever. On the basis of this promise it is assumed that the Messiah will be from the line of David, and Christians trace the line of Jesus directly back to King David. In the biblical story David is the youngest son of Jesse and a member of the tribe of Judah. When David is still a boy tending his sheep, the prophet Samuel anoints him as king. He first encounters King Saul when he is taken before the king to soothe him with music. The young David first earns his warrior’s reputation when he defeats the giant Philistine Goliath armed only with a sling and stones. David becomes commander of Saul’s armies and a close friend of Saul’s son, Jonathan. But Saul, jealous of David’s reputation, once tries to kill him. Reconciled, Saul then gives David his daughter,

Michal, to marry—in exchange for the foreskins of 100 Philistines. But Saul’s jealousy of David continues, and David must be saved from Saul’s wrath, first by Jonathan and later by Michal. Finally David flees to the king of the Moabites. With an army of 600 men David becomes a mercenary, but Saul continues to pursue him, despite David’s sparing Saul’s life at one point and promising not to destroy Saul’s descendants after becoming king. Ultimately Saul and Jonathan are both killed in battle with the Amalekites, and David becomes king of Judah. After Ish-Boshet, Saul’s younger son, is killed, David becomes king of all of Israel at the age of 30. His first act is to conquer the city of Jerusalem and make it his capital. Seeing the threat of David’s power, the Philistines attack Israel, but David defeats them and drives them out. His kingdom secure, he takes the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, where he intends to build a temple for it. But he is warned by the prophet Nathan that God will not permit him to do so because he is a man of blood. Finally David defeats all of his neighbors and establishes an empire. In his personal life, on the other hand, David has a number of setbacks. His lust for Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite, leads him to commit adultery and to send Uriah into the front lines of a battle in which he is killed. David marries Bathsheba, but God punishes him by the death of Bathsheba’s first child. Further his son, Absalom, raises an army to rebel against him. He marches on Jerusalem and takes over the palace while David flees. But 430

Detto d’amore 431 through a spy, Hushai the Archite, David learns all of Absalom’s plans and is able to quash the rebellion. Absalom is killed in the ensuing battle. In his old age David anoints Solomon, his son by Bathsheba, as his successor. After putting down an attempted coup by his brother, Adonijah, Solomon takes over, receiving David’s dying instructions to follow God’s laws. David was buried in Jerusalem, known as the City of David. Dante refers to David several times in the CONVIVIO and in DE MONARCHIA, mainly as the psalmist. He also includes David in all three canticles of the COMEDY: In the fourth canto of the INFERNO (l. 58) David the king is listed along with ADAM, Noah, Moses, Abraham, Jacob, and Rachel among those released from Limbo when Christ harrowed Hell. In the PARADISO David appears in the heaven of Jupiter among the souls of the just who form the great celestial eagle. David, who is revealed as the eye of the eagle, is introduced as one of the six great champions of earthly justice (with TRAJAN, Hezekiah, CONSTANTINE, King William II of Sicily, and the Trojan RIPHEUS) (Paradiso 20, ll. 37–42). Perhaps the most significant depiction of David in the Comedy is in Canto 10 of the PURGATORIO. Here the scene of David’s dancing before the Ark of the Covenant as it is taken into Jerusalem is carved in white marble on the terrace of Pride as an exemplum of humility (Purgatorio 10, ll. 64–69). The carving also depicts Michal, looking on in disdain from above, disapproving of David’s undignified display (see 1 Samuel 6.14–17). Through his dance of joy David humbles himself before God and his people, but Michal personifies a kind of arrogance: In the Bible story she is punished for her vanity with childlessness. It has been suggested that Dante intends David to be a figure of himself as poet: As David the psalmist humbles himself to the scorn of others, so Dante the poet writes in the vulgar tongue, rather than in Latin. Dante felt his humble use of the vernacular might be looked upon with disdain by pedantic critics, who thereby allied themselves with the attitudes of the haughty Michal. Detto d’amore (late 13th century) The Detto d’amore or “Tale of Love” is a late 13th-century

poem of 480 lines in the Tuscan dialect. The poem is based on the Roman de la Rose, the widely known Old French love ALLEGORY begun by Guillaume de Lorris in about 1230 and completed by Jean de Meun sometime around 1270. The poem has survived in a single manuscript that was once a part of the same manuscript that contains IL FIORE, another Tuscan poem based on the Roman de la Rose, which has been often attributed to Dante. Because it has long been assumed that the Detto d’amore was composed by the same poet as Il Fiore, some scholars have assumed that Dante also wrote it. The poem is composed in seven-syllable couplets and as such appears to be influenced by BRUNETTO LATINI’s Tesoretto, which employed a similar verse form and also used Guillaume de Lorris’s section of the Roman as a source. The heptameter couplets were an apparent attempt to imitate the octosyllabic couplets of the Old French poem. The poem was first published in 1888 by Salomone Morpurgo, who had first discovered the untitled text in manuscript and who coined the title from two internal references to the poem as a detto, the apparent Tuscan equivalent of the Old French dit, the term for a narrative poem. The Detto is an allegorical love poem that utilizes passages of the Roman de la Rose, particularly passages concerning the allegorical figures of Reason and Wealth, though unlike Il Fiore it does not follow the entire narrative of the Roman and does not use the image of the rose as the ultimate goal of the narrator’s desire. The poem begins with the narrator’s lengthy discourse declaring his absolute fidelity to love. This is answered by an equally lengthy opposing argument supplied by Reason, itself followed by a fairly conventional 100-line description of the lady’s beauty and grace. Ultimately the way to his love is blocked by the character Wealth. This is followed by a long list of the rules of love, after which the lover determines to consult his good friend. The poem breaks off inconclusively after line 480, and most scholars consider the poem unfinished as we have it. The poem is noteworthy for its experimental use of rhyme and its author’s confident use of source material for his own ends. But there is little reason to connect it with Dante other than its association

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with Il fiore. For purposes of this Critical Companion I have resisted including it as a canonical poem of Dante’s, as there is no convincing evidence to the contrary and no critical consensus as to its canonicity. Further Reading Casciani, Santa, and Christopher Kleinhenz, trans. The Fiore and the Detto d’amore. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000. Took, John. Dante: Lyric Poet and Philosopher. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Dido Dido (also called Elissa) was a well-known figure in the Middle Ages, thanks to the influence of Virgil’s AENEID, where her story makes up much of the fourth book. The daughter of King Belus of Tyre, Dido was married at a young age to her own uncle, the wealthy Sichaeus. But Pygmalion, Dido’s brother, murdered Sichaeus for his riches. Subsequently the ghost of Sichaeus visited Dido and told her the truth about his murder, whereupon Dido fled from Tyre. She sailed to the North African coast, where, according to legend, she founded the city of Carthage, becoming its queen. Virgil describes the arrival of Aeneas and the other surviving Trojans on the shores of Carthage in Book 2 of his Aeneid. Dido, who had sworn perpetual faithfulness to her dead husband, is enamored of the Trojan leader, and for some time she and Aeneas live together as man and wife. The gods, however, have other plans for Aeneas, and they remind him that he must fulfill his destiny—he must sail to Italy, where he will found the Roman nation and become, ultimately, the father of the Roman Empire. For Dante, who saw the empire as part of God’s plan to Christianize the world, this was a sacred duty. In Book 4 of the Aeneid Aeneas deserts Dido and sails for Italy. The despairing Dido builds a funeral pyre and then stabs herself with a sword while lying upon the pyre. When the pyre is lighted, the glow of the flames can be seen from Aeneas’s retreating ships. With this story Virgil created a mythic background for the enmity between Rome and Carthage that led to the three Punic Wars and ultimately the destruction of Carthage that paved the way for Rome’s dominance of the Mediterranean.

Dante places Dido in the second circle of Hell, among the lustful, where Virgil points her out to the pilgrim Dante: “she who killed herself for love / and broke faith with the ashes of Sichaeus” (INFERNO 5, ll. 61–62). But her position in Hell is something of a surprise, since it would seem more appropriate for her to be in the seventh circle, among the suicides. This may be a case where Dante is judging the pagan sinner by the standards of her own time (as he does with a number of figures in Hell). Particularly in the context of the Stoic Virgil’s epic, suicide itself was not deemed a sin. But Dido’s lust for Aeneas was the root cause of both her suicide and the breaking of her oath to Sichaeus, and that lust is her chief transgression. Diomedes Diomedes was one of the most famous Greek heroes of the Trojan War. He was the son of Tydeus (one of the seven kings who made war on Thebes) and Deipyle and became king of Argos upon the death of his grandfather, Adrastus. According to legend along with the other Epigoni (or “after born”—sons of the Seven against Thebes), Diomedes took part in the destruction of Thebes in retaliation for the death of his father. He later joined the Greek forces in their siege on the great city of Troy. In HOMER’s Iliad Diomedes is one of the greatest Greek warriors, second only to ACHILLES himself. Particularly in Book 5 of Homer’s epic Diomedes rallies the Greeks while Achilles refuses to take part in the battle. He nearly succeeds in killing Aeneas (the Trojan prince who later will escape Troy’s destruction and found the Roman nation) and is prevented only by the intervention of Aeneas’s mother, the goddess Aphrodite, whom Diomedes manages to wound in the hand. Dante had no direct knowledge of Homer and drew his information about Diomedes from later sources. One of these, of course, was Virgil’s AENEID. But Dante would have known several others, in particular two late classical Latin prose works—Dictys Cretensis’s Ephemeris belli Trojani (“Chronicle of the Trojan War”) and Dares Phrygius’s De excidio Trojae (“The Destruction of Troy”)—as well as the epic Roman de Troie by the 12th-century Old French cleric Benoît de Sainte-

Dolce stil novo Maure and the Historia destructionis Troiae, GUIDO DELLE COLONNE’s 1287 prose redaction of Benoît. From these sources Dante would have found evidence for most of the sins with which he charges Diomedes. Dante places Diomedes in the eighth bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell—the hell of the evil counselors. He is placed within a large flame along with ULYSSES, with whom Dante associates him as coconspirators in several devious stratagems associated with the Trojan War. Specifically Dante charges Diomedes (with Ulysses) of hatching the plot of the Trojan horse—the wooden horse in which Greek warriors hid in order to gain entrance into the city of Troy when the ill-advised citizens drew the wooden structure in through the city walls. In addition Dante charges Diomedes with the theft of the Palladium, a wooden statue of Pallas Athena on which the security of the city of Troy depended. According to Virgil (Aeneid 2. 162– 170), Ulysses and Diomedes stole the statue and took it to Argos, thus ensuring that the city would fall. Finally, Dante lists the “grief of Deïdamia” as a reason for Diomedes’ damnation. Deïdamia was the lover of Achilles on the island of Scyros, where Achilles was hidden, disguised as a woman. Ulysses and Diomedes managed to see past Achilles’ disguise, while convincing him to abandon Deïdamia and their child and to join the war on Troy. Perhaps it was this negative view of Diomedes and his association with the smooth-tongued Ulysses in this canto that influenced Chaucer’s unflattering portrait of the Greek hero as a smoothtalking ladies’ man in his Troilus and Criseyde. Dionysius the Areopagite Dionysius the Areopagite is named for the hill in Athens where Paul preached a sermon in Acts 17. His conversion by Paul is recorded in Acts 17.34. In the Middle Ages Dionysius was the purported author of a number of mystical texts. Tradition says that Dionysius was the first Christian bishop of Athens and was martyred there circa 95 C.E. Another tradition says that he visited Paris, and an attempt has been made to identify him with Saint Denis, the third-century patron saint of France. Denis was originally known as Saint Dionysius, and it may be that the supposed

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works of the Athenian Dionysius were first attributed to the Parisian saint in 827 when they were translated for King Louis the Pious. It seems that because of Neoplatonist views found within these Dionysian texts and quotations from eminent personages who lived nearly three hundred years after Dionysius’s death, these works were more likely conceived in the fifth century by an unknown monk or priest who used the martyred bishop’s name as a pseudonym, leading to the misconception that these works arose in the first century rather than the fifth. As a result of this misconception and the complete lack of knowledge concerning his identity the unknown author who styled himself as the Athenian bishop and martyr became known as Pseudo-Dionysius. But in the Middle Ages the first-century Dionysius was universally credited with the texts all now attributed to the “Pseudo-Dionysius.” Medieval scholars ascribed to him a number of works on divine names, mystic theology, and, most important, De coelisti hierarchia (“On the celestial hierarchy”), a book that during the medieval period became the ultimate reference guide to celestial beings, specifically angels. It was translated into Latin by John Scotus Erigena in the ninth century. In it are ideas that Dante himself professed and illustrated in The Divine Comedy. In PARADISO 10, ll.115–117, Dante asserts the truth of Dionysius’s description of the angelic hierarchy. In the CONVIVIO (2.5.6) Dante had followed an alternative classification of the angelic orders proposed by Saint Gregory, in his Homilies on the Gospel (32–48), a classification also accepted by Dante’s mentor, BRUNETTO LATINI, in his Trésor. But in the COMEDY Dante accepts Dionysius’s view, placing Dionysius in Paradise, in the heaven of the sun, where he lives eternally among theologians. He is pointed out by SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS as “the burning candle next to him / who, in the flesh, on earth saw to the depths / of what an angel is and what it does” (Paradiso 10, ll. 115–117). Whitney Jones Dolce stil novo The “sweet new style” in English, Dolce stil novo is the name scholars have given to a style of Tuscan lyric love poetry practiced by

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Dante, GUIDO CAVALCANTI, and others, in the last decades of the 13th century. The term itself is taken from Canto 24 of Dante’s PURGATORIO (ll. 49–62), in which the pilgrim Dante is greeted by the spirit of the poet ORBICCIANI DA LUCCA BONAGUINTA. Bonagiunta refers to the first CANZONE of Dante’s VITA NUOVA—“Donne, ch’avete intelletto d’amore” (“Ladies, who have intelligence of love”)—saying that it embodies the “sweet new style” that neither he, nor GIACOMO DA LENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINI, “THE NOTARY”), founder of the Sicilian school of Italian poetry, nor GUITTONE D’AREZZO, founder of the earlier Tuscan school of poetry, had been able to achieve. That style is one that extols a kind of selfless love of the lady as a revered creature of God and implies that love of her might lead the lover to love God himself. Stylistically the Dolce stil novo eliminated many of the rhetorical colors of the earlier poets but employed much more complex imagery drawn from learned medical, astronomical, and philosophical sources. The stilnovisti, as scholars call practitioners of this style, included (in addition to Dante) LAPO GIANNI, DINO FRESCOBALDI, GIANNI DEGLA ALFANI, CINO DA PISTOIA, GUIDO GUINIZELLI, and most important Dante’s “first friend,” Guido Cavalcanti. Whether these poets ever formed a “school” as such is debatable, but their poetry does tend to employ similar content and imagery. Guinizelli’s great canzone “Al cor gentil” (“The Gentle Heart”) is often seen as the first poem in the Dolce stil novo. In this canzone Guinizelli presents the lady as the image of divine beauty. Because of his “gentle heart” the lover is drawn to her, and she in turn kindles within that heart a more refined love that is turned toward Heaven itself. Guinizelli’s poem inspired Cavalcanti to reject what he saw as the excessive rhetoric of the Tuscan school of Guittone d’Arezzo. Cavalcanti’s own best-known canzone, “Donna me prega” (“A Lady Asks Me”), is a definition of love itself that is rhetorically more straightforward than Guittone’s poetry but utilizes such complicated images from physics, astronomy, psychology, and Scholastic philosophy that it is virtually unintelligible to those without such knowledge. This exclusiveness is important for Cavalcanti: Only the truly noble

of heart can understand such poetry, and presumably the “lady” to whom the poem is addressed is one of these. Dante’s early poetry follows Cavalcanti’s lead in many ways, but whereas Cavalcanti presented love as a predominantly negative experience because it caused such great pain, Dante sees love as chiefly benevolent, an attitude he first makes clear in the poem Donne, ch’avete intelletto d’amore, the poem for which Bonagiunta praises him in the PURGATORIO. In that poem Dante turns from focusing on the lover’s own pain to glorifying the perfections of the lady herself. Here Beatrice takes her admirers by stages to the love of God as the angels themselves desire Beatrice in order to make Heaven’s own perfection complete. Some scholars believe that Dante’s use of the term Dolce stil novo was intended to refer only to Dante’s own poetry. But most readers recognize that Guinizelli, Cavalcanti, and some other contemporary poets such as Lapo Gianni and Cino da Pistoia use a similar exclusive and complex imagery and elevate the lady of their love poetry to a quasidivine status, at the same time emphasizing the noble heart of the poet-lover that elevates him, too, above the ignorant masses who cannot understand true love. With the COMEDY Dante clearly transcends his earlier love poetry and that of the other stilnovist poets, but this poetry does provide the context from which Dante’s transcendent poetry sprang. Dolcino Tornielli of Novara, Fra (d. 1307) Dolcino Tornielli was the leader of a radical reformist sect known as the Apostolic Brotherhood. The sect, founded in Parma in the late 13th century by Gherardo Segarelli, was focused on returning to the simplicity of the apostolic church and reducing the secular power of the clergy. Called Fra Dolcino not because he was a monk but because of his membership in the Apostolic Brotherhood, Tornielli became leader of the sect upon Segarelli’s death in 1300. Ultimately the sect was declared heretical, in particular for practicing communal ownership of property, and for reputedly holding women in common as well. When POPE CLEMENT V issued a bull

Donati, Corso in 1305 calling for the suppression of the Apostolic Brothers, Fra Dolcino took thousands of his followers into the hills between Novara and Vercelli in the Piedmont area of northern Italy. Safe in the impregnable hills, the sect withstood a crusading army sent against them by the pope for more than a year until, forced by starvation to capitulate, they were massacred in large numbers in March 1307. Fra Dolcino was taken prisoner and, in June 1307 was burned alive as a heretic, along with his declared “sister in Christ” Margaret of Trent, the woman purported to be his mistress. In Canto 28 of the INFERNO Dante alludes to Fra Dolcino through the figure of MUHAMMAD, damned among the sowers of discord. Muhammad gives Dante a message to take back to Fra Dolcino: Tell him to stock up on food if he does not want winter to drive him from the hills (Canto 28, ll. 58–60). Why Muhammad should be interested in Fra Dolcino is puzzling, though it seems likely that Dante would have thought of them both as religious schismatics, each splitting off from the true church. Dante’s character of Muhammad thus sees in Fra Dolcino a kindred spirit. Dominic, Saint (ca. 1170–1221) Saint Dominic, born Domingo de Guzmán, was the founder of the Dominican order of friars and one of the most influential churchmen of the Middle Ages. Dominic was born in the Castilian village of Calaroga. His parents, Felix Guzmán and Joanna of Aza, were members of noble Castilian families. According to legend Joanna is supposed to have dreamed before Dominic’s birth that she mothered a dog with a torch in its mouth that set the whole world ablaze. At the age of 14 Dominic attended the university at Palencia, where he studied for some 10 years before becoming a canon of the cathedral at Osma in 1195. In about 1203 he journeyed to Rome in the company of his bishop and is said to have asked permission of Pope Innocent III to preach to the Tatars. Innocent denied this request, instead sending Dominic and his bishop into southern France to join the Cistercians, whom he had just charged with a crusade against the heresy of the Albigensians. For some years Dominic and his bishop preached through Languedoc and

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seem to have had some success in converting some of the heretics, founding a house for women converts in 1206. During these years a number of harsh measures were taken against the Albigensians. Dominic was not, as some have held, the founder of the inquisition (which was established before 1200), but the inquisition certainly played a part in the Albigensian Crusade. But most historians have exonerated Dominic of involvement in the more cruel measures taken against the heretics. He was still in southern France in 1215, when he attended the Fourth Lateran Council in the company of Folquet, the bishop of Toulouse, and when he returned to Languedoc in 1216 he was granted a house and church in Toulouse to accommodate the 16 preachers who worked with him. That same year his order of Preaching Friars was officially approved by Pope Honorius III. The order spread quickly, with houses established in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, England, and Poland within the first few years of its recognition. In 1219 Dominic moved to Bologna and set up the headquarters of the new order there. He died in Bologna in 1221 and was buried in the church of San Domenico. He was canonized in 1234 by Pope Gregory IX. In the heaven of the Sun in Dante’s PARADISO the Dominican friar SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS mentions Dominic as one of the two princes of Church, raised up by God to champion the church’s cause (Canto 11, ll. 35–36). Having given the pilgrim a biography of SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI, he laments how far the contemporary Dominicans have fallen from Dominic’s original ideal (Canto 11, ll. 121– 139). In the same circle SAINT BONAVENTURE, a Franciscan, tells the life story of Dominic in a way that perfectly parallels Saint Thomas’s biography of Saint Francis (Canto 12). Donati, Corso (d. 1308) A kinsman of Dante’s wife, GEMMA DONATI, Corso Donati is best known as the leader of the Black GUELPHs (the NERI). He rose to a position of great power, essentially controlling FLORENCE until, charged with treason by his own party, he was killed trying to escape arrest on October 6, 1308. Corso was the brother of Dante’s close friend FORESE DONATI (whom Dante places in Purgatory) and the virtuous PICCARDA DONATI,

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whom Dante places in Paradise. Corso himself, through a prophecy of Forese’s pronounced in PURGATORIO 24 (ll. 82–90), Dante consigned to Hell. Corso was a member of the ancient knightly warrior class and was an effective military leader. He rose to prominence through his heroic actions in the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO in 1289, when, against orders from his superiors, he led a company of rear guard cavalry into battle and thus routed the GHIBELLINE army from AREZZO. After Campaldino, however, factions formed within the Guelph majority in Florence. Under the regime of GIANO DELLA BELLA, the city adopted the so-called Ordinances of Justice in 1293, aimed largely at preventing citizens from ancient noble families from holding public office in the city. But in 1295 under the leadership of Corso Donati and backed by the newly elected POPE BONIFACE VIII, Giano was driven from office on charges of treason, and the statutes were overturned. Two new rival parties emerged from the political squabble: the Whites (BIANCHI) under the leadership of VIERI DE’ CERCHI and the newly wealthy merchant class, and the Blacks (Neri) representing the interests of the old aristocracy and headed by Corso Donati. The two parties clashed verbally and, on occasion, physically in the streets of Florence. Dante’s friend GUIDO CAVALCANTI, who supported the Whites, was attacked in an assassination attempt by agents of Corso, and later Guido avenged the attack by assaulting Corso on the street with a group of armed supporters. On May Day, 1300 groups of young Blacks and Whites brawled in the street during the celebration, and this was followed by an even more severe disturbance at the feast of SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST, the city’s patron, on June 24. To keep the peace, the priors of the city (Dante among them) banished the leaders of both parties, Corso and the Blacks exiled to Perugia, and the Whites (including Guido Cavalcanti) to Sarzana. When the Whites were recalled to the city before his own Black party, Corso fled to Rome, where he lobbied with Pope Boniface to intercede in the situation. At Corso’s urging Boniface negotiated with CHARLES OF VALOIS (brother of the French king PHILIP IV THE FAIR) to enter Florence and “pacify” it with 2,000 troops. Charles entered the

city on November 4, 1301, vowing to remain neutral and not to interfere with the laws of the city. Apparently that same night Corso Donati secretly reentered the city with other leaders of his party. After releasing a number of their supporters from prison, the Blacks embarked on a six-day reign of terror (with Charles’s tacit consent) in which they burned and looted the homes of leading members of the White faction, including Dante’s. The existing government was quickly replaced by one made up entirely of Blacks, and Corso Donati was de facto governor of the city. By 1302 all the leading Whites had been driven from Florence. However it seems that Corso Donati’s arrogance and ambition eventually alienated his own party. Nor did the fact that Corso’s wife was the daughter of UGUCCIONE DELLA FAGGIUOLA, of the Romagna Ghibellines, inspire trust among the Black Guelphs. In 1308 after apparently conspiring with the backing of Uguccione to make himself absolute ruler of Florence, Corso was condemned to death as a traitor. Corso fled but was apprehended just outside the city by Catalan mercenaries. After unsuccessfully trying to bribe his captors, Corso apparently either fell or threw himself from his horse, catching his foot in one of his stirrups. Accounts of his death differ—some say that he was dragged to death by the horse, others that he was speared through the throat by one of his captors as he hung from the stirrup. In his prophecy in the Purgatorio Dante has Corso’s brother, Forese, claim to see Corso being dragged by a beast off to Hell—apparently in an allusion to Corso’s actual manner of death, though some commentators believe that the beast dragging Corso to Hell is in fact Boniface VIII. Donati, Forese (d. July 28, 1296) Forese Donati was a Florentine friend of Dante’s, and a kinsman of Dante’s wife, GEMMA DONATI. He was also the brother of CORSO DONATI, leader of the Black GUELPHs and therefore Dante’s enemy, and PICCARDA DONATI, whom Dante places in Paradise among the “breakers of oaths” in the sphere of the moon (in Canto 5). Forese, whom Dante sometimes calls by the nickname Bicci Novello, was something of a minor poet himself and engaged in a tenzone or poetic debate with Dante, exchanging some rather

Donati, Piccarda scurrilous SONNETs with the poet in which the two traded vigorous but apparently good-natured insults. In this poetic correspondence, consisting of three sonnets by each of the disputants written (probably) between 1293 and 1296, Dante accuses Forese of gluttony in two different poems. For good measure he also implies that Forese is a bastard and a thief and accuses him of pride and of sexual neglect of his wife, suggesting in one sonnet that Forese’s wife, Nella, has a persistent cold (even in August) because he never keeps her warm in bed. Forese retaliates by insulting Dante’s father and by accusing him of cowardice for not having avenged the murder of his kinsman GERI DEL BELLO Alighieri (who appears in Canto 19 of the Inferno). In the COMEDY Dante places Forese on the sixth level of Mount Purgatory (PURGATORIO 23, ll. 48ff.), where the starving spirits of the gluttonous are purged of their sin. At first he does not recognize his friend, but when he realizes that the spirit with the emaciated features is in fact Forese, Dante greets him warmly. But the pilgrim is surprised to see that Forese has already made so much progress up the mountain, since he has been dead for less than five years and, besides, had repented late in life. Forese tells Dante that the earnest prayers of his virtuous widow, Nella, have eased the way for him and allowed for his swift ascent through Purgatory. Dante’s conversation with him continues into Canto 24, where (after condemning the looseness of some of the women of FLORENCE) he mentions his virtuous sister, Piccarda, who, he reveals, is already in Paradise. He also points out some of the other gluttons on this terrace, including Pope Martin V and the poet ORBICCIANI DA LUCCA BONAGIUNTA. Donati, Gemma (ca. 1267–ca. 1333) Gemma Donati was Dante’s wife. Born about two years after Dante to Manetto and Maria Donati, Gemma was betrothed to Dante when he was 12 years old, and the couple were married sometime around 1285, when the poet was in his early 20s. Gemma bore their first child, Giovanni, in about 1288. The family grew by two more sons, Pietro and Iacopo, and finally a daughter, Antonia, born about 1300. Gemma stayed in FLORENCE with Antonia after Dante’s exile in 1301. Late in Dante’s life, how-

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ever, when he and his sons Pietro and Iacopo were staying in RAVENNA as guests of GUIDO NOVELLO DA POLENTA, Gemma was able to join him along with Antonia, who soon entered a convent in Ravenna. Dante died in September 1321, but documents that exist indicate Gemma was still alive as of June 1333. Aside from these few facts almost nothing is known about Gemma. As a Donati, she was related to Dante’s friend FORESE DONATI as well as his bitter enemy CORSO DONATI. Dante never mentions his wife in any of his works, whereas he consistently holds up the image of Beatrice as the symbol of female perfection. Yet it would be imprudent to assume that Dante had no feelings for the flesh-and-blood woman he had married. Perhaps Dante simply preferred to keep his domestic life private. Despite the nearly 20 years they spent apart as a result of Dante’s exile, there is no reason to believe their reunion in Ravenna was not a joyous one. Donati, Piccarda (late 13th century) Piccarda Donati was the daughter of the prominent Florentine Simone Donati, and hence the sister of Dante’s friend FORESE DONATI and of Dante’s bitter enemy CORSO DONATI, the implacable Black GUELPH leader largely responsible for Dante’s sentence of exile. She was thus Dante’s relative by marriage, a cousin of Dante’s wife, GEMMA DONATI. Piccarda was a pious girl who at a young age joined the Florentine convent of the Franciscan order of Saint Clare. She was not able to remain cloistered, however: Her brother Corso, scheming to make political alliances, entered the convent by force and coerced Piccarda to renounce her vows and marry the Florentine Rossellino della Tosa. But the marriage did not last long: Piccarda soon fell ill and ultimately died. Some legends claim that her illness was an answer to her prayer that she might be spared the loss of her virginity. Of the three Donati siblings Dante assigns one to Hell (Corso), one to Purgatory (Forese), and one to Heaven (Piccarda). The first mention of Piccarda in the COMMEDIA is in Canto 24 of the PURGATORIO (ll. 10–15). Here Dante, conversing with the soul of his friend Forese, is told by her brother

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that Piccarda is already in heavenly bliss. Dante meets her in Paradise in the sphere of the Moon (PARADISO, Canto 5, ll. 49ff.), a sphere reserved for those who, as is the Moon itself, were inconstant in their vows to God. When he sees her, Dante initially fails to recognize her because her face is so changed by the bliss she feels. The poet, recognizing that Piccarda is among the lowest-ranked

souls in the hierarchy of Heaven, asks her whether any of the souls in that sphere desire to be placed higher. Piccarda tells him good-humoredly that each soul in Paradise experiences all the joy and contentment it is capable of feeling. All are completely satisfied, and for one to desire more would be contrary to the will of God—an impossibility in Heaven’s perfect realm.

F Farinata degli Uberti (d. 1264) Manente di Jacopo degli Uberti, known as Farinata, was the most important GHIBELLINE leader in FLORENCE. He survived exile to lead the Ghibellines to a decisive victory over the Florentine GUELPHs at the Battle of Montaperti. Farinata was born to the Uberti, an important Florentine noble family, in the early 13th century. He was a child in 1215 when the murder of Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti set off the bitter rivalry between the Guelphs and Ghibellines of Florence, and the Uberti family, like most of the old nobility, sided with the Ghibellines. In 1239 Farinata became head of the Uberti family—the most powerful Ghibelline family in the city—and thereby became de facto leader of the Ghibelline party. In this capacity he was instrumental in expelling the Guelphs from the city in 1248. But when Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA died in 1250, the pro-Imperial Ghibelline party began to weaken, and the Guelphs returned to Florence in 1251. By 1258 Farinata was himself exiled from his native city. Farinata escaped to Siena, where he allied himself with the supporters of Frederick’s natural son, MANFRED, and began to gather an armed force to regain control of Florence. On September 4, 1260, Farinata and his troops dealt a crushing defeat to the Florentine Guelphs and their allies at Montaperti on the river ARBIA. Farinata and his forces subsequently captured Florence itself and once more expelled the leading Guelph families.

The Ghibellines now controlled all of TUSCANY, and shortly after the battle the leading Ghibellines of the region met in council at Empoli, 18 miles from Florence. The prevailing sentiment among these leaders from Siena, PISA, and other great Tuscan cities was that Florence should be razed to the ground, so that it would never again be a threat to the Ghibelline party. Farinata alone rose at the meeting to oppose the resolution, declaring that he would defend his native city to the death, even if he had to do so alone. His single voice saved Florence from destruction, though the Ghibellines did destroy hundreds of houses and other buildings in the city. Farinata returned to live in Florence, where he died in 1264, a year before Dante’s birth. Shortly thereafter in 1266 the Guelphs were able to return to Florence and oust the Ghibellines permanently. In revenge for Montaperti the victorious Guelphs destroyed every building belonging to Farinata’s Uberti clan in what is now the Piazza della Signoria, declaring as well that no buildings would ever again be erected in that place. The partisan bitterness toward Farinata and his family was still not quenched, however, and 19 years after his death Farinata and his wife, Adaleta, were posthumously excommunicated from the church and declared heretics by Florentine inquisition, headed by Fra Salomone of Lucca. Their bodies were exhumed from their resting places at Santa Reparta and reburied in unhallowed ground, and the inheritance of Farinata’s two surviving nephews was confiscated. 439

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Farinata’s heresy is undocumented and may merely have been a politically motivated strike at an enemy of papal authority no longer able to defend himself. But Dante follows the official church pronouncement and places Farinata in the sixth circle of the Inferno, the hell of the heretics. The pilgrim had already asked the glutton CIACCO about Farinata in Canto 6 and was told that the Ghibelline captain’s soul was deeper down in Hell. Dante’s meeting with Farinata in Canto 10 is one of the most memorable scenes in the INFERNO: The great Ghibelline statesman, standing waistdeep in a tomb, retains his worldly arrogance, seeming to scorn all of Hell. He still shows great interest in the political life of his city and as he discusses his banishment with Dante makes a dark prediction that Dante himself will soon learn what it means to be exiled from his home (Canto 10, ll. 80–81). Fiesole A Tuscan city located on a hill four miles northeast of FLORENCE, Fiesole was an ancient settlement that was originally one of the 12 towns forming the Etruscan confederacy. Remains of ancient Etruscan walls can still be seen in the city. In 283 B.C.E. the town was conquered by the Romans, who called it Faesulae, and the ruins of a Roman bath and theater are also still extant in the town. Fiesole gained notoriety in 62 B.C.E. when it became the headquarters for Catiline’s army during his rebellion. When Roman troops under MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO’s command crushed Catiline’s forces, they destroyed the city as well and subsequently founded the city of Florence. Dante would have been familiar with this story from BRUNETTO LATINI’s Trésor, and in Canto 15 of the INFERNO Dante has Brunetto recall the tradition that Florence was originally founded by Romans and immigrants from Fiesole (the nobility originally descended from the Romans and the commoners from the Fiesoleans). It is the blood of these rocklike residents “descended from the Fiesole of old” that makes the people of Florence an “ungrateful and malignant race” (ll. 61–62), according to Brunetto. Dante alludes to Fiesole twice more in the COMEDY. In Canto 6 of the PARADISO the emperor JUS-

I in the heaven of Mercury alludes to the Roman army’s destruction of “that hill” that overlooks Dante’s city (ll. 53–54). Later in Paradise CACCIAGUIDA in the heaven of Mars mentions that some of the prominent families of Florence, including the Caponsacchi, an important GHIBELLINE clan, were descended from the Fiesole (Canto 16, ll. 121–122). What Dante seems to imply, through both Brunetto and Cacciaguida, is that much of the civil strife of Florence is attributable to this incompatible mixture of noble Roman with base Fiesole stock. TINIAN

Fiore, Il (ca. 1285–1290) Il Fiore (“the Flower”) is a late 13th-century narrative poem in the Tuscan dialect often attributed to Dante. The poem is a sequence of 232 SONNETs retelling, in brief, the plot of the 22,000-line Roman de la Rose, the popular Old French dream vision ALLEGORY begun by Guillaume de Lorris about 1230 and completed by Jean de Meun about 40 years later. Il Fiore was first discovered and published in 1881 by Fernand Castets. It survives in a single manuscript, MS H 438 of the Biblioteca Interuniversitaria in Montpelier, a manuscript that also contained another Tuscan poem based on the Roman de la Rose, DETTO D’AMORE, which has also sometimes been attributed to Dante. The “flower” of Il Fiore, like the “Rose” of the Roman, is the allegorical symbol of the narrator’s beloved, whom he wishes to seduce. Il Fiore’s plot follows that of the Roman and is remarkable in its successful synthesis of Guillaume de Lorris’s courtly vision with Jean de Meun’s satirical and scholarly continuation. The 4,000 lines of Guillaume’s section are summarized in the first 32 sonnets of Il Fiore, while the 18,000 lines of Jean’s continuation are condensed into the Tuscan poem’s final 198 sonnets. The author of Il Fiore eliminates much of Jean’s lengthy encyclopedic digressions, creating a unified narrative of the two very different parts of the Roman. The plot of Il Fiore involves the narrator’s attempt to achieve the flower, the female object of his desire. He is aided in his attempt by the god of love, who also enlists the support of Amico (Friend). It is Amico who advises the lover to

Florence employ deception, the character False Seeming, to approach the lady. The lady herself creates barriers to his suit, allegorically represented by characters named Disgust and Evil-tongue. Later on the lover is supported by the Old Woman, who in a long discourse urges the lady to accept the narrator as her lover. In the poem’s climax the lady and her allies are besieged in a castle, but with the help of the goddess Venus the narrator succeeds in taking the castle and plucking the rose. But Il Fiore has been of interest mainly because of its attribution to Dante. Certainly Dante was familiar with the Roman de la Rose. His mentor BRUNETTO LATINI had used Guillaume de Lorris’s section as a source for his allegorical Tesoretto in the 1260s. Further Dante’s use of his earlier love poems as a springboard to philosophical discussion in the CONVIVIO mirrors Jean de Meun’s achievement in the Roman, just as the epic-scale philosophical vision of Dante’s COMMEDIA may in part owe something to the earlier wide-ranging intellectual exploration of the Roman. But more specific evidence than these tenuous relationships is needed to establish Dante’s authorship of Il Fiore. From the time of Castet’s initial publication of the poem, scholars have focused on the fact that the narrator of Il Fiore twice identifies himself as “Durante,” the Italian name of which Dante is the diminutive. In addition there are references in Il Fiore to two historical characters—FRIAR ALBERIGO and SIGER OF BRABANT—who appear in the COMEDY. More recent critics have pointed out possible stylistic parallels to and verbal echoes of other canonical works of Dante’s. Still there is no consensus among scholars concerning Dante’s authorship of Il Fiore, and for purposes of this Critical Companion I have chosen to adopt the more conservative position that regards such an attribution as uncertain. The narrator’s calling himself “Durante” is interesting, but even if the narrator’s name is the author’s, there were certainly other Tuscan writers called Durante or Dante (the first several sonnets in the RIME are addressed to the otherwise obscure poet Dante da Maiano). And if the accepted date of 1285–90 for the poem is accurate, then it would have been written during the period dealt with in the Vita

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nuova, when it is clear Dante was inspired chiefly by Italian and Provençal lyric poetry (rather than French narrative), and when his ideas about love were becoming more spiritual and exalted, in utter contrast with the erotic love celebrated in Il Fiore. Further Reading Baranski, Zygmunt G., and Patrick Boyde, eds. The Fiore in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany. Devers Series in Dante Studies. Vol. 2. Notre Dame, Ind., and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. Brownlee, Kevin. “The Practice of Cultural Authority: Italian Responses to French Cultural Dominance in Il Tesoretto, Il Fiore, and the Commedia.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 33, no. 3 (July 1997): 258–269. Casciani, Santa, and Christopher Kleinhenz, trans. The Fiore and the Detto d’Amore. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000. Took, John. Dante: Lyric Poet and Philosopher. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Florence (Firenze) The city of Florence in the region of TUSCANY was Dante’s home. He was shaped by its history and condemned by its politics and spent the last 19 years of his life longing to return to his beloved homeland while condemning it for its violence and its obstinacy. In DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA he calls it the pleasantest place on earth (1.6.3), while in his letter to HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG he refers to it as a viper and a stinking vixen (Epistle 7). Florence began as a small market square along the ARNO River about three miles southwest of the hill on which stood the Etruscan city of FIESOLE. The citizens of Fiesole would go down to buy fruits and vegetables from area farmers. When the Romans conquered the area, they put a road through the marketplace and erected a garrison there. During the Roman imperial period Florence became a prosperous hub of commerce, a center for trade entering Italy from the north. As Dante interpreted this history, Florence was a true Roman city, and the pure Roman stock, according to

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Dante’s ancestor CACCIAGUIDA in the central cantos of the PARADISO, made the city great. After Florence conquered Fiesole in 1125, an influx of Fiesolean immigrants swelled the city’s population and, according to BRUNETTO LATINI (INFERNO 15, ll. 61–62), this “ungrateful and malignant race” was the ultimate origin of the divisiveness that plagued the city in Dante’s lifetime. Another explanation for this bitter feuding is in Inferno 13, where an anonymous Florentine suicide tells Dante that after the city abandoned its original patron, the god Mars, for a new Christian patron (SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST), Mars pledged that Florence never would have peace (ll. 142–150). After the fall of Rome Florence was subject to periodic attacks by Germanic tribes—the Ostogoths in 401, the Goths (who razed the city to the ground in 542), and finally the Lombards, who established a kingdom of which Florence was a significant part as capital of the dukedom of Tuscany. Charlemagne defeated the Lombards in 799 and made the city of Florence a fief of the Holy Roman Empire. But the last countess of Tuscany, Matilda, was one of the strongest noble supporters of Pope Gregory VII in his power struggle with the Emperor Henry IV in the 11th century, and when she died in 1115, she bequeathed all of her territory to the church. As a result Tuscany was disputed territory between the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor for many years, during which the city of Florence gradually developed into virtually a free city-state. This was the time of Dante’s noble ancestor Cacciaguida, a Florentine knighted by the emperor Conrad III in the Second Crusade before he was killed in battle in 1147. Born in 1090, Cacciaguida would have witnessed the countess Matilda’s reign, as well as the Florentine destruction of Fiesole, before joining the crusade at the end of his life. Through Cacciaguida’s mouth Dante praises this period as the high point of Florentine civil life, a time of simplicity and virtue, without the ostentatious display of luxury that characterized the Florence of Dante’s time. In the 13th century Florence had developed into a true urban center, its economy driven by

prosperous merchants and banking houses. Its craft guilds became powerful political and economic forces. By 1252 Florence began minting its own currency, the florin. On the strength of Florence’s economy the florin soon became standard currency throughout Europe. The population also expanded. Cacciaguida estimates the Florence of his day to be about one-fifth the size of Dante’s Florence. Estimates make the population perhaps 15,000 in the mid-12th century, and anywhere from 70,000 to 100,000 in Dante’s time. This expansion necessitated rebuilding the city walls, a project begun in about 1284. Other great building projects were begun in Dante’s time, including the church of Santa Maria Novella in 1279, Santa Croce in 1295, the Palazzo Vecchio in 1298, and most important in 1296 the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, which would become known as the Duomo after the addition of Brunelleschi’s great 15th-century dome. For Dante this expanse of population was a cause of civil strife, as the influx of foreigners such as the Fiesoleans undermined the virtue of the pure Roman stock. Further the great mercantile expansion spurring all the new building projects was evidence of the corruption of the city through luxury that drew the citizens away from the virtues of their earlier, simple lifestyle. By Dante’s time Florence had become what he calls a city “filled with envy” (Inferno 6, l. 49), “proud and avaricious” (Inferno 15, l. 68). In Inferno 16 he makes clear the source of this deterioration: “A new breed of people with their sudden wealth / have stimulated pride and unrestraint / in you, O Florence, made to weep so soon” (ll. 73–75). Dante is reacting particularly to the civil strife that plagued the Florence of his day. By the 13th century Florence had been drawn into the bloody GUELPH-GHIBELLINE feud that was engulfing all of Italy. It was a rivalry that dominated Florentine politics for some 74 years and forms much of the political background of Dante’s Comedy, as many of the characters the pilgrim meets on his journey through the three realms of the afterlife are either Guelph or Ghibelline partisans. The Guelph party comprised chiefly middle-class citizens who supported the commercial interests of Florence

Florence and generally supported the secular power of the papacy. The Ghibelline party was made up of members of the landed aristocracy and generally supported the Emperor in secular matters. The origin of the Guelph-Ghibelline feud in Florence is alluded to by Cacciaguida in Paradiso 16, ll. 133–147. He speaks of the wealthy Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti, who was betrothed to a woman of the noble Amidei clan but broke off the engagement on their wedding day in 1215 in order to marry a woman of the Donati family. The Amidei avenged their family honor by murdering Buondelmonte at the base of the statue of Mars on the Ponte Vecchio on Easter Sunday, 1215. The important families of Florence all joined one side or the other, the Donati adhering to the Guelph cause and the Amidei to the Ghibelline. The squabbling continued for years. In 1248 with the aid of the Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA, the Ghibellines drove the Guelphs into exile, but the Guelphs were called back in 1250 and dominated the municipal government. In 1258 they expelled the Ghibellines from Florence. Two years later the Ghibellines, led by FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI (whom Dante meets among the heretics in Canto 10 of the Inferno), crushed the Guelphs at the Battle of Montaperti, forcing the Guelphs into exile once more. But the Ghibelline cause throughout Italy was dealt a crushing blow with the defeat of MANFRED, son of Frederick II, in the Battle of Benevento in 1266, after which the prominent Ghibellines were banished from Florence again. The Ghibellines were restored in 1278 through the negotiations of POPE NICHOLAS III but were shut out of municipal government by the Guelphs. With the support of their allies in PISA and AREZZO the Ghibellines encountered the Florentine Guelphs in the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO in 1289, a battle in which Dante himself took part as a member of the Guelph cavalry. The Ghibellines were decisively beaten in this battle, effectively emasculating the Ghibelline cause for 20 years. The Guelph party itself, however, eventually split into two factions, calling themselves the BIANCHI (“Whites”) and the NERI (“Blacks”). This

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split had its origins in a family squabble among to branches of the Cancellieri family that erupted into a virtual civil war in Pistoia and spread to Florence when the Florentines stepped in to pacify their neighboring city. The Whites, to whom Dante belonged, were the more moderate faction of Guelphs, who chiefly supported merchant interests and favored peace as it ensured unhindered trade. The Blacks were more radical in supporting papal interests and the bellicose ambitions of Florence. By 1300 POPE BONIFACE VIII was openly supporting the Blacks, while the Whites were disgruntled with the pope’s policies. When Black-White violence broke out in the summer of 1300, the Florentine priors, including Dante, who had been elected to that position in June, exiled leaders of both parties, including Dante’s kinsman the Black CORSO DONATI and Dante’s great friend the White GUIDO CAVALCANTI. Boniface subsequently invited CHARLES OF VALOIS, brother of the French king PHILIP IV THE FAIR, into Italy with the goal of “pacifying” Florence. Dante was part of a three-member envoy sent to Boniface, but while Dante was in Rome, Charles of Valois led his army into Florence in November 1301 and restored the exiled Black leaders. The new Black government tried Dante in absentia for graft and sentenced him to permanent exile, to be executed if he were ever found on Florentine land again. These events are the subject of a good deal of “prophecy” in the Comedy, which Dante set over Easter weekend 1300. CIACCO (Inferno 6, ll. 64– 72), VANNI FUCCI (Inferno 24, ll. 143–150), and HUGH CAPET (PURGATORIO 20, ll. 74–75) all make allusions to some of these events, until in Paradiso 17 Dante’s kinsman Cacciaguida describes clearly how Dante will be forced to spend years in lonely exile. As a final note it might be worth mentioning that Dante’s dire predictions for his city and the destruction that would result through the expansion of Florence and its new material wealth, appear to have missed the mark. Already in Dante’s time Florence was well on its way to becoming the cradle of the Italian Renaissance. The wealth that was

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Focaccia

funding the great building projects of the 13th and 14th centuries was creating patrons for such artists as GIOTTO DI BENDONE, and soon would give rise to Ghiberti and Brunelleschi and, ultimately, Michelangelo. Dante himself was creating a new Tuscan vernacular literary Renaissance that would soon involve FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) PETRARCH and GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO, and even the intricacies of Florentine politics would ultimately produce the premier Renaissance political theorist, Macchiavelli. Florence continues to this day to be the icon of Renaissance art, all produced from the degenerate mercantile city that Dante eschewed. Focaccia (late 13th century) Vanni de’ Cancellieri of Pistoia, better known as Focaccia, was one of the chief figures in the blood feud within the Pistoian Cancellieri family that split the Pistoian GUELPHs into the White and Black factions that ultimately spread to FLORENCE, setting off the great civic unrest in that city. Focaccia (his nickname is a kind of flat bread) was a White Guelph and was so notorious a bully—he had already cut off the hand of one of his own kinsmen after a perceived insult to his father—that the Blacks of the Cancellieri clan plotted to have him killed. They sent three young toughs (one of whom was the infamous VANNI FUCCI, whom Dante depicts among the thieves in INFERNO 24–25) to waylay and murder Focaccia, but Focaccia managed to escape from them. He later told his friends that it was better to give the Blacks the joy of seeing him run away than of seeing him dead. But the Blacks followed up their attempt on Focaccia’s life with the assassination of another prominent White, Bertino de’ Vergiolesi, a kinsman of Focaccia’s wife. In October 1293 Focaccia took vengeance by treacherously murdering his own cousin, Detto di Sinibaldo Cancellieri (the father of the boy whose hand he had earlier cut off). These murders had plunged the city of Pistoia into violence so uncontrollable that even the podestà or chief magistrate (an office traditionally held by an outsider from another town) resigned and left the city to its own devices. Amid this confusion Focaccia struck again, this time murder-

ing one of the three youths who had attacked him earlier, who also happened to be one of Bertino’s killers. This last act plunged the city into anarchy, so that the city authorities were forced to appeal to their powerful neighbor, Florence, to intervene and restore order—an undertaking that was ultimately to embroil Florence in the Black-White feud and spawn the terrible violence that plagued Dante’s city. Dante places Focaccia in Caïna in the lowest depths of Hell (where the treacherous against kin are punished), apparently for the murder of his cousin. In line 63 of Canto 32 Camicione de’ Pazzi mentions him as one of the worst of the sinners in that place. Perhaps this was because of the longterm strife his acts of violence caused in Dante’s native city, Folquet de Marseille (ca. 1160–1231) A troubadour poet and later an influential bishop involved in the Albigensian Crusade, Folquet de Marseille has a prominent place in the third sphere of Heaven in Dante’s PARADISO, the circle of Venus. He is the only troubadour whom Dante places in Heaven. Folquet’s father was a Genoese merchant who left Folquet a substantial inheritance, and by 1178 Folquet was a wealthy merchant in his own right, based in Marseille. Sometime around 1280, though, he left that occupation to become a wandering troubadour, first in the court of Alfonso II of Aragon and later, over the next 15 years or so, in the courts or entourages of such powerful nobles as Richard Coeur de Lion, Alfonso VIII of Castile, Count Raymond V of Toulouse, and Barral de Baux, the viscount of Marseilles. Famous for his amorous exploits, Folquet was rumored to have been in love with Viscount Barral’s wife, who rejected him. Most of his 29 extant poems are conventional courtly love lyrics, though a few take as their topic a more spiritual kind of love, including one “dawn song” addressed to God rather than a lady. This spiritual aspect seems ultimately to have grown strong enough to dominate Folquet’s life, and sometime before 1200 he became a Cistercian monk, persuading his wife to enter a convent as well along with their two sons. Folquet rose quickly

Fortune in the Cistercian order, becoming abbot of the Provençal abbey of Thoronet in 1201. Four years later he was appointed bishop of Toulouse. It was in that capacity that Folquet attained his greatest influence: He supported SAINT DOMINIC and in 1215 helped found the Dominican order. In 1229 he was influential in helping establish the University of Toulouse. But he is best remembered, and particularly reviled, for his role in the Albigensian Crusade. Folquet began by preaching against the Catharist heresy, prevalent in early 13th-century Provence, and when the church called for a crusade against the heretics in 1208–09, Folquet was a chief prosecutor who reportedly sent hundreds of Catharists to their deaths. Dante does not mention Folquet’s bloody role in the crusade. He places Folquet in the sphere of Venus, the realm of the amorous, along with CUNIZZA DA ROMANO. Cunniza introduces him to Dante as one who had achieved excellence and great fame on earth. Folquet explains to Dante how his devotion to physical love eventually led him to the more spiritual love of God. He then points out the soul of Rahab, the Jericho prostitute who aided the Israelites and who was the first soul brought into this sphere of Heaven. Folquet’s crusading spirit comes out somewhat as he concludes his remarks by censuring the pope and the church for neglecting their responsibility in the Holy Land and their spiritual duties in general, and denouncing the corruption of Dante’s city of FLORENCE as well (Paradiso 9, ll. 82–142). Fortune Fortune, or Fortuna, is a major allegorical figure in medieval literature and mythology, generally personified as a woman with a perpetually spinning wheel that symbolizes her fickleness. It is an image used by most important medieval writers, including ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS, Chaucer, FRANCESCA (FRANCIS) PETRARCH, and GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO as well as Dante himself. On her wheel are the gifts that Fortune can bestow, most often including wealth as well as power, fame, honor, and, by Dante’s time, romantic love. To covet any of these gifts was to grab hold of Fortune’s wheel. Her spinning might well set you at the top of the wheel. But since it is her nature to

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change, the wheel will inevitably spin downward again: One cannot hang onto the gifts of Fortune. In classical times Fortuna was a blind divinity who doled out gifts at random. But the most influential picture of Fortune for medieval writers occurs in Boethius’s early sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy. In Book 2 of the Consolation the character Boethius laments his state and blames Fortune for his loss of power and influence, and his current imprisonment. Lady Philosophy, who has arrived to visit him in his cell, argues that fickleness is Fortune’s nature, and she is simply being herself. No earthly goods actually belong to human beings—wealth, power, and fame are all transient things—and so Fortune takes from us nothing that was ever truly ours. In fact Philosophy tells Boethius, bad fortune is more beneficial to us than good fortune, because through bad fortune one comes to know who one’s true friends really are. Dante knew Boethius well, but in his view of Fortune he also made use of SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, who rejected the role of Fortune altogether and attributed the success of Rome not to Fortune but to the will of God—a position Dante was to take up in his DE MONARCHIA. Dante also used SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, who sees Fortune as an aspect of divine providence. These views are not inconsistent with those of Virgil himself, who in the AENEID identifies Fortune with the will of Jove. It is therefore not by chance that Dante allows the character of Virgil to explain at some length the role of Fortune in God’s universe in Canto 7 of the INFERNO (ll. 73–96). Dante even has Virgil allude to the classical poet’s own Third Eclogue, in which he expresses the conventionally pagan view of Fortune’s judgments as hidden like a snake (l. 84). But the overriding theme of Virgil’s lecture on Fortune is the Christian view (and Virgil’s own view in the Aeneid) that Fortune does the will of God. In fact more than any writer before him Dante Christianizes Fortune: She is, in Virgil’s explanation, one of the intelligences—angels God has appointed to turn the particular heavenly sphere assigned to them. Fortune is essentially the Intelligence or angel responsible for rotating the splendors of the

446 Fourth Eclogue earth, as the heavenly assigned intelligences rotate the splendors of God’s heavens. Thus Fortune’s task in serving God is to circulate earthly goods and riches among families and nations, for it is only by circulation that wealth does any good. When it is hoarded, it serves only to decay the soul of the hoarder. Thus Dante converts what was in classical thought an irrational and vaguely malignant force into a heavenly being, one who serves a valuable purpose in God’s universe. Fourth Eclogue (Virgil, ca. 42–37 B.C.E.) Virgil’s Eclogues (sometimes called Bucolics) were a collection of 10 pastoral poems in the style of the Alexandrian poet Theocritus, whose Idylls reflected the idealized lives of shepherds, including singing matches, dirges, love songs, and joking. Virgil imitates these forms, but Virgil makes his Eclogues relevant to his own day by introducing contemporary people into his poems. The most famous of these poems was the Fourth Eclogue, in which Virgil proclaims the birth of a child whose coming will usher in a new golden age. Like most of his contemporaries, Virgil saw himself as living in one of the great periods of human history. He alludes to the Greek poet Hesiod, who first described the golden age in his Works and Days, but asserts that after decaying into an age of iron, the world was on the verge of returning to that ideal golden time once again. Scholars are not sure just who this miraculous child is to whom Virgil alludes. Since the poem is apparently addressed to the consul Gaius Asinius Pollio, most believe that the child is Pollio’s infant son. Pollio, who was consul in 40 B.C.E., had helped Virgil save his family farm from confiscation by the state just a year earlier, and the poem could easily be regarded as grateful praise of a supportive patron. That Pollio’s progeny might usher in a new golden age was not simply idle flattery, though: Virgil might well have seen Pollio as the most likely peacemaker between the rivals Marc Antony and Octavian in the wake of GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR’s assassination in 44 B.C.E. It is also possible that the child alluded to is the expected child resulting from the marriage of Marc Antony to Octavia, sister of Octavian, in 40 B.C.E.

Such a child would symbolize peace and reconciliation. Or it is possible that the child referred to is allegorical and simply represents the new age that is dawning. Most important for Dante beginning in the late classical period and throughout the Middle Ages the Fourth Eclogue was regarded by Christian readers as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus Christ. The key passage in this interpretation is lines 5–7 of the poem: magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. iam redit et Vergo, redeunt Saturnia regna, iam noval progenies caelo demittitur alto. the great cycle of the ages is born anew. Now the Virgin returns, Saturn’s reign returns; now a new offspring is being sent down from high heaven. (Durling, ed., Purgatorio, pp. 584–585)

The reference to a Virgin and to a child sent from Heaven to bring about a great new age was irresistible to medieval Christians. The original lines as Virgil wrote them are spoken by the Sybil of Cumae, a prophetess, who sees the return of the golden time when Saturn ruled the world. This will be preceded by the return of the Virgin (or Astraea, an allegorical personification of Justice), who had left the earth with the dawning of the iron age. Dante himself recognizes this allusion when he discusses these lines in his DE MONARCHIA (1.11.1), insisting that it is justice that the lines refer to, not the Virgin Mary. Still Dante did concur with the widespread belief that these lines predicted Christ’s birth. Such a prophecy in the words of a classical Roman poet fit all too conveniently into Dante’s political mythology, which saw the Roman Empire as divinely ordained as the forerunner of the Christian society. In the PURGATORIO Dante has the later Roman poet PUBLIUS PAPINUS STATIUS tell Virgil that he was led to the Christian faith by the prophecy in Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue. Virgil, says Statius, was like a lonely pilgrim who moves through the dark holding his lantern behind him, “shedding light / not for himself but to make others wise” (Canto 22, ll. 68–69). The implication is that Virgil himself did

Francis of Assisi, Saint

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not understand the words he wrote, though they guided others. Thus Virgil remained a pagan and in Dante’s world is forever barred from salvation. Francesca da Rimini (d. ca. 1285) Also known as Francesca da Polenta, Francesca da Rimini was the daughter of the lord of RAVENNA, Guido Vecchio da Polenta (d. 1310). In about 1275 in order to consolidate a political alliance between his city and Rimini, Guido married his beautiful daughter to Gianciotto, the second son of Malatesta da Verrucchio, lord of Rimini. Gianciotto was reputedly physically deformed but was his father’s likely heir, an important motive for this political alliance. Francesca, however, was attracted to Paolo Malatesta, the handsome younger brother of Gianciotto. In time the two began an affair that reportedly lasted for several years before Gianciotto discovered the two lovers together and killed them both, sometime between 1283 and 1286. Precise details of Francesca’s story are difficult to determine because there are no contemporary references to the affair or to the deaths of Paolo and Francesca. Dante’s story of the lovers in Canto 5 of the INFERNO is the earliest account we have. GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO tells their story at some length, but his highly romanticized version is clearly an elaboration of Dante’s rendering and so the details he adds (of Francesca’s trying to protect her lover from her husband’s wrath and dying in the process, for example) are probably unreliable. Dante’s meeting with Francesca and Paolo, blown about by the violent winds in the circle of the lustful in Canto 5, is one of the most dramatic and admired scenes in the Inferno. Readers remember Francesca’s pathetic story and, like Dante the pilgrim, are often filled with pity for the lovers. But Francesca’s speech is a carefully wrought effort designed to win the listener’s sympathy and to deflect any blame from her. She blames the book of Lancelot and Guinevere that the two were reading when they were first overcome by passion; she blames her husband, who, she says, will be condemned to Caina (in the ninth circle of Hell, where are punished the treacherous against their kinsmen); she essentially blames everyone but herself for her sin.

Paolo and Francesca, from Canto 5 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National ArtCollections Fund, 1922.

In an ironic twist Dante spent his last years in exile in Ravenna, where he was the guest of Francesca’s nephew, GUIDO NOVELLA DA POLENTA. Perhaps, as do most readers, Guido misread Dante’s portrayal of his aunt as sympathetic. Francis of Assisi, Saint (1181–1226) Saint Francis was born in Assisi, a town in Umbria, the son of the wealthy merchant Piero Bernardone. Bernardone groomed his son to follow him into the merchant trade, or perhaps even to become a knight, to which end he sent him into the military. Francis was taken prisoner in 1201 in battle with Perugia and spent a year as a hostage. Sent into another military campaign to Apulia in 1206, Francis received a vision calling him to the service of God instead. After this he broke with his father and lived in poverty, eventually attracting 11 followers, to whom he gave a Rule for living. Chiefly Francis advocated poverty, simplicity of life, and

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Frederick II of Swabia

humility and led his followers to care for the poor and the sick—one of his first projects after his call was to care for lepers. Francis received the verbal approval of Pope Innocent III for his new order, the Friars Minor. From the Benedictines of Monte Subasio he obtained the gift of a small church in Porziuncula, just outside Assisi, which became the home base for his new order. In that same year another follower of Francis, Clara Sciffi, a young noblewoman from Assisi, founded the order of the Poor Clares. In 1223 Pope Honorius III approved a new official Rule of the Friars Minor, after which Francis decided to resign the leadership of his order and devote more time to solitary prayer. During this time in 1224 on the mountain of La Verna he received the stigmata (the wounds of Christ’s Passion). His health declined sharply after this, and he died at Porziuncula on October 3, 1226. Less than two years after his death Francis was canonized by Pope Gregory IX. Francis is mentioned a number of times in Dante’s COMEDY. One of the more memorable of these is in Canto 27 of the INFERNO, when the evil counselor GUIDO DA MONTEFELTRO, a Franciscan friar in his old age, tells of his moment of death: Saint Francis goes to retrieve his soul, but the devil snatches it from him because of his unrepented sin of evil counsel, suborned by POPE BONIFACE VIII (Inferno 27, l. 112). In the Mystic Rose in the Empyrean Heaven at the end of the PARADISO Saint Bernard points out Francis’s place among the heavenly company, with SAINT BENEDICT OF NURSIA, SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, and SAINT DOMINIC (Paradiso 32, l. 35.) But certainly Dante’s most important use of Saint Francis is the brief biography of the saint recited by the Dominican SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS in the heaven of the Sun in Canto 11 of the Paradiso. Dante’s probable sources for this life were early biographies of the saint by SAINT BONAVENTURE and by Thomas of Celano. Here Aquinas affirms that God created two princes—Dominic and Francis—to guide the church, describing Francis as outstanding for his love, as are the Seraphim, and Dominic as remarkable in wisdom, as the Cherubim. He chooses to tell the story of Francis and

recites it as a love story concerning Francis and the Lady Poverty. Dante was familiar with the story of how Francis’s father, angry with him for using the family’s money to repair a church, had him thrown in jail and taken before the bishop, whereupon Francis stripped off his clothes and vowed to live a life of poverty. As Aquinas tells it, Francis displeased his father by marrying a woman (poverty) that no one else would have since Christ, her first spouse, had died long before. Aquinas tells of how Francis converted early followers and received the approval of Pope Innocent III and Honorius III for his new order of Friars Minor, and how he went off to Egypt to preach to the sultan. Aquinas then tells of how Francis returned to Italy, where upon the mountain of La Verna he received the stigmata (marks of Christ’s Passion). Two years after this, Aquinas says, Francis died, still in the embrace of the Lady Poverty, whom he commended to the love of his followers. Frederick II of Swabia (1194–1250) Frederick II was the last of the Hohenstaufen family to hold the title of Holy Roman Emperor. For Dante he was the last true emperor (CONVIVIO 4.3.6). Frederick was the son of the Emperor Henry VI and EMPRESS CONSTANCE of Sicily and was grandson of Frederick I, known as Barbarossa. His contemporaries called Frederick II stupor mundi (the wonder of the world), alluding presumably to his wide intellectual interests (it was said he could speak nine languages). Frederick’s father died in 1197, and the infant Frederick succeeded him as king of Sicily. But Henry’s death set off a war between two rival claimants of the Imperial throne: Philip, the duke of Swabia (brother of Henry VI), and Otto, the duke of Saxony and Bavaria, who was ultimately victorious. When his mother died in 1198, the three-year-old Frederick was made the ward of Pope Innocent III. The young King Frederick was raised in the diverse and cosmopolitan city of Palermo. Frederick was not yet 18 when a group of rebellious German nobles—encouraged by Innocent III, who had fallen out with Otto—elected him Holy Roman Emperor. In 1220 he was crowned the undisputed emperor by Pope Honorius III in Rome,

Frescobaldi, Dino 449 taking over essentially as the pope’s champion in contrast with the excommunicated Otto. Seven years later, however, Frederick was himself excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX. In 1225 Frederick had married Yolanda, the heiress to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and vowed to fight a crusade there, but since the crusade had not occurred by 1227, the pope condemned him. In 1228 Frederick finally did travel to the Holy Land, negotiated Christian access to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and in 1229 crowned himself King of Jerusalem on the basis of his wife’s claim. Having negotiated peace in defiance of the pope’s wishes and conducted his crusade while still excommunicate, Frederick was again excommunicated. Frederick’s struggles with the papal see continued throughout his reign, a fact that prevented him from exercising his Imperial authority throughout Italy, as many Italian nobles and cities sided with the pope (these were those of the GUELPH party, while Frederick’s supporters were GHIBELLINEs). His own son, Henry (son of Frederick’s first wife, Constance of Aragon), whom Frederick had made king of Sicily, rebelled against his father and was imprisoned in 1235. Frederick was excommunicated again in 1239, while continuing to war against the Italian states, sending his son Enzio to annex some of the papal territories in northern Italy. Hostilities ceased briefly when a new pope, Innocent IV, was elected in 1243 but erupted again through what Frederick saw as Innocent’s bad faith in connection with the rebellion of the Ghibelline city of Viterbo. Innocent finally formally deposed Frederick at the Council of Lyons in 1245. Frederick continued to defy the pope but after the disastrous Battle of Parma in 1248 was all but finished. In 1250 he died in his castle in Florentina, leaving his natural son, MANFRED, to promote the Ghibelline cause in Italy until his death in 1266. For Dante, who had his own difficulties with POPE BONIFACE VIII, Frederick was an ideal ruler. Frederick was a patron of learning and the arts. He founded the University of Naples in 1224. In his court was born the first school of Italian poetry in the vernacular, a school that included GIACOMO DA LENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINO, “THE NOTARY”) and Frederick’s own close counselor, PIER DELLE

VIGNE, whom Dante places among the suicides in Canto 13 of the INFERNO. Dante speaks of Frederick’s nobility in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA 1.12.4 but in Convivio 4.3 argues against Frederick’s purported conception of nobility as the combination of ancient wealth and manners, preferring his own focus on virtue. Despite his admiration of Frederick, Dante places him in the circle of heretics in Canto 10 of the Inferno, basing this on the popular conception that Frederick and many members of his court were Epicureans. Other members of Frederick’s family also make significant appearances in the COMEDY: Manfred is placed among the late repentant in Canto 3 of the PURGATORIO, while Frederick’s mother, Constance, appears among the inconstant in the sphere of the Moon in Canto 3 of the PARADISO. Frescobaldi, Dino (ca. 1271–1316) Dino Frescobaldi was one of the lesser-known members of the stilnovisti, the group of Tuscan poets to which Dante and GUIDO CAVALCANTI belonged, distinguished by their use of the DOLCE STIL NOVO (sweet new style). It is essentially the testimony of Boccaccio that connects Frescobaldi with Dante. According to Boccaccio Frescobaldi was a popular and intellectual poet who had rediscovered the lost first seven cantos of Dante’s Inferno. Boccaccio says that Frescobaldi sent the recovered cantos to the marquis MOROELLO MALASPINA of Valdimagra, Dante’s host in his exile in about 1307. While there may be reason to doubt the factual basis of Boccaccio’s story (Dante does not seem to have begun the INFERNO until about 1307), it does demonstrate that Frescobaldi was in fact a well-known poet in the late 13th and 14th centuries and that he was associated with Dante’s circle. Dino was from a family of poets. He was the son of Lamberttuccio di Ghino, a Florentine banker who wrote poetry in the earlier manner of the Tuscan school of GUITTONE D’AREZZO. Dino’s son, Matteo, followed Dino in composing poetry in the Dolce stil novo manner of Dante and Cavalcanti. Dino’s poetry is rather similar to Cavalcanti’s in its application of learned psychological imagery to the analysis of love, and in its depiction of love as a torment, causing the lover suffering and grief. But

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Fucci, Vanni

Frescobaldi goes beyond imitation in his imagery, sometimes startling the reader, as when he compares his beloved to a she-wolf tearing him apart. While Frescobaldi was important in his own day, as Boccaccio’s evidence implies, he is little read today. Some modern scholars consider his imagery derivative at best, and inappropriate when he becomes innovative. But others admire Frescobaldi’s innovations and see him as a poet who breathed new life into the fading conventions of the Dolce stil novo. Fucci, Vanni (ca. 1300) Vanni Fucci was born in Pistoia, a small city in TUSCANY some 15 miles northwest of FLORENCE. Vanni was the illegitimate son of Guelfuccio (or “Fuccio”) di Gerardetto de’ Lazzari, a member of a noble Pistoian family. He is known to have taken part on the side of Florence in the Florentine wars against PISA between 1289 and 1293, and since Dante was also active in these battles, it is possible that Fucci and Dante may have met in those years. But Fucci was to become a fierce Black GUELPH partisan, so notorious for his acts of violence that he was known as “the Beast.” Among the violent crimes Fucci is said to have committed are the destruction and plundering of personal property, including the burning of homes, as well as murder, all directed against the White Guelphs of Pistoia. According to one early account Fucci was banned from Pistoia on a number of occasions but was able to sneak in to consort with some of his nefarious companions. But the crime for which Vanni Fucci remains famous is the one Dante has his shade admit to in Canto 24 of the INFERNO: the attempted theft of sacred objects from the Church of San Zeno in Pistoia. This infamous crime was perpetrated in January 1293, when unknown persons broke into San Zeno and violated the treasury of the Chapel

of San Jacopo, which held two extremely valuable silver tablets adorned with images of the Virgin and the apostles. The thieves were unsuccessful, and the crime was not solved until 1294, when a certain Vanni della Monna confessed to the offense and implicated Vanni Fucci and another Pistoian named Vanni Mironne as his accomplices. The confession apparently saved the life of one Rampino di Francesco Foresi, who had been arrested for the crime and sentenced to death. Rampino remained in custody, however, until March 1295, when the confessed criminal was condemned for the crime. Vanni della Monna was executed, but Vanni Fucci managed to escape the authorities and remain at large until his death in 1300. Dante places Vanni Fucci in bolgia seven of his Inferno’s eighth circle, the Hell of the thieves. Here, compelled to answer Dante’s questions about what put him in the circle of thieves when he was known mainly for his violence, Fucci confesses to the theft at San Zeno; it would seem that his part in the theft had not been proved by the time of his death and of Dante’s fictional journey in 1300, and Dante the poet has taken this opportunity to set the record straight about the notorious theft. Fucci, ashamed to be found in this circle of Hell by one who will return to the world, takes his revenge on Dante by issuing a dark prophecy about the defeat and expulsion of the Florentine Whites by the Blacks, ending his prophecy with the malicious comment that he has told Dante this in order to grieve him (Canto 24, ll. 140–151). The last we see of Fucci is in the beginning of Canto 25, when in the most shocking act of blasphemy in the Inferno he throws an obscene gesture in the face of God. Recalling that Fucci’s crime was the plundering of a church, Dante must have seen him as an irrevocably blasphemous sinner.

G Galehot (Gallehault) An important secondary character in the 13th-century French prose Lancelot du Lac (a long prose romance that forms part of what is called the Vulgate Cycle), Gallehault (called Galehot by Dante) was the character responsible for bringing the lovers Lancelot and Queen Guinevere together. In the story Gallehault (known as “the king from beyond the marshes”) makes war upon Arthur, but peace is negotiated by Lancelot, and he and Gallehault become close friends. While Gallehault is residing at Arthur’s court, Lancelot reveals to his friend his love for the queen, and Gallehault, acting as go-between, convinces Guinevere (who is already in love) to meet secretly with Lancelot. At this meeting Gallehault urges Guinevere to give Lancelot a kiss, and this begins their adulterous affair. Because of the popularity of the story the name Gallehault subsequently came to be used as synonym for a go-between or a pander. In Canto 5 of the INFERNO in the circle of the lustful FRANCESCA DA RIMINI describes how she and Paolo began their own affair after reading the passage in the romance of Lancelot describing the hero’s first meeting with Guinevere. The book itself, she says, was “our Galehot” (l. 137).

of Charlemagne’s premier knight, Roland, as well as Oliver and the other 12 peers (Charlemagne’s chief retainers). Ganelon, Roland’s stepfather, is angry when Roland nominates him for the dangerous task of negotiating with the Saracen king Marsilion. Ganelon is to give Marsilion the message: Be baptized or pay tribute to Charlemagne. But Ganelon, seeing an opportunity to avenge himself on Roland, advises Marsilion to dissimulate. Let Charlemagne cross the Pyrenees, Ganelon advises the Saracen king, and promise to follow after to surrender in person. When Charlemagne crosses the Pyrenees, Ganelon knows he will put Roland in command of the rear guard, and Marsilion can ambush the guard in the mountains and slaughter the flower of France. Events fall out just as Ganelon has planned. In the great battle at Roncisvale Roland sounds his horn to summon Charlemagne to aid him, but Ganelon tries to convince the king that the horn is not being sounded as a call for help. The king finally does ride to Roland’s aid but arrives too late, to find his 12 peers and all the rear guard slaughtered. Ultimately Ganelon’s treachery is revealed, and after Ganelon is found guilty in a trial by combat, he is condemned to be drawn apart by four wild horses. By Dante’s time the name Ganelon had become another term for a traitor. Dante places Ganelon in Antenora, the second round of the ninth circle of Hell, reserved for those who betrayed their country (INFERNO 32, l. 122).

Ganelon Perhaps the most infamous traitor in medieval literature, Ganelon was a knight in Charlemagne’s retinue who, according to the Old French epic Song of Roland, betrayed Charlemagne’s rear guard to the Saracens, thereby causing the deaths 451

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Ghibelline

Ghibelline Ghibellines were members of the political party that emerged in the cities of northern and central Italy in the late 12th century and was characterized mainly by its support of the Holy Roman Empire and Imperial interests. In contrast the GUELPHs were the party that supported the church. The Ghibellines were made up largely of families of the ancient landed aristocracy and their allies and as the party of the emperor supported authority, law, and order and advocated a world order governed by a universal world monarch, preferably ruling from Italy. Their rival Guelphs were generally middleclass citizens who supported commercial and papal interests. For some 74 years these factions were at the root of bitter internecine warfare throughout the Italian Peninsula. As time went on and the Imperial cause fell apart, however, these distinctions became blurred, and party differences had more to do with local rivalries between and within the cities of Italy. The origin of the Guelph-Ghibelline rivalry lay in the controversy surrounding members of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in 12th-century Germany. When Emperor Henry V died without a direct male heir in 1125, the electors ignored precedent and went outside the royal family to elect Lothair, duke of Saxony, as the new emperor, snubbing Henry’s closest heirs: the Hohenstaufen brothers, dukes of Swabia and Franconia. The electors distrusted the Hohenstaufen family because of its attempts to curtail the power of the great barons, while the church feared that a new Hohenstaufen emperor would maintain the generally antipapal policies of his forebears, Henry IV and Henry V. The term Waiblingen (Ghibelline in Italian), which became the war cry of the supporters of the Hohenstaufen claims, was the name of a great estate in Swabia belonging to the Hohenstaufen family. The war cry of Welf (Italian Guelph) was the name of an important noble family whose members were dukes of Bavaria—Lothair had married the daughter of the Welf duke in order to solidify his support, and hence the family name became the name for his party of followers. During the reign of Frederick I, known as “Barbarossa” (1155–90), who attempted to reassert Imperial authority in northern Italy, the two parties became solidified as pro-Imperial Ghibellines and propapal Guelphs.

In the PARADISO Dante’s ancestor CACCIalludes to the event that reputedly began the Guelph-Ghibelline feud in TUSCANY (16, ll. 133–147). In the year 1215 the heir of a wealthy Florentine family—Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti—was betrothed to a woman of the more prestigious Amidei family. On their wedding day, however, Buondelmonte broke off the engagement in order to marry the daughter of Gualdrada Donati. The Amidei and their allies (including the powerful Lamberti and Uberti families), stung by the blow to their honor, took revenge by murdering Buondelmonte on Easter Sunday, 1215, at the foot of the statue of Mars on the Ponte Vecchio. The incident polarized the city, and chroniclers relate that of the 72 important families of FLORENCE, 39 became Guelphs under the leadership of the Buondelmonti and Donati, while the others became Ghibelline under Uberti leadership. The resulting feud was to lead to civil strife in Florence for generations, reflecting the larger political turmoil of all of Italy, until the Guelphs in Florence finally prevailed in 1289. The first great victory in the ongoing Florentine struggle went to the Ghibellines in 1248. Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA, having been nominally deposed by Innocent IV at the Council of Lyons in 1245, was seeking to weaken the power of the Guelphs and chose Florence as his battleground. He contacted the Uberti, leaders of the Ghibellines, and offered them assistance in expelling the Guelphs from the city. When the Uberti agreed, Frederick sent his natural son Frederick of Antioch, with 1,600 German mercenaries, into Florence and drove the Guelphs into exile. But the people of Florence rebelled against the Ghibellines’ harsh government and when Frederick II died in 1250 recalled the Guelphs from exile. Because the subsequently established popular government was largely Guelph, the Uberti again entered into a conspiracy to oust their rivals, this time with Frederick’s son, MANFRED. But when the plot was discovered in 1258, it was the Ghibellines who were expelled from the city. The exiled Ghibellines took refuge in Siena, and two years later, with the help of the Sienese and other supporters of Manfred, FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI led the GhiAGUIDA

Giacomo da Lentino bellines to a decisive victory over the Florentine Guelphs at the Battle of Montaperti (September 4, 1260). Now the Guelphs were forced into exile again, taking refuge in Lucca and leaving all of Tuscany in the control of the Ghibellines. Fortunes changed quickly once more, however, when Manfred was defeated and killed by the papal champion CHARLES OF ANJOU at the battle of Benevento (February 26, 1266). The Guelphs of Florence expelled the most prominent Ghibellines in November, and after a brief attempt at reconciliation through marriage alliances—in which Farinata’s daughter, Beatrice degli Uberti, was married to GUIDO CAVALCANTI, son of an important Guelph family—the peace collapsed and the remaining Florentine Ghibellines were exiled in 1268, when the Guelphs agreed to accept Charles of Anjou as governor of the city for 10 years. In 1278 at the instigation of POPE NICHOLAS III the Ghibellines were partially reconciled with Florence, though the Guelphs continued to control the city’s government. In 1289 the Ghibellines attempted to reconquer Florence, supported by allies from AREZZO and PISA. On June 11 they encountered the Florentine Guelphs and their allies at the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO (in which Dante took part as a member of the Guelph cavalry) and were decisively defeated. Campaldino effectively ended the Ghibelline cause in Italy for 20 years, until HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG crossed the Alps to reassert Imperial authority in Italy. Dante, whose sympathies by then had allied him with the Ghibelline cause, wrote an open letter to the cities of Italy, pleading that they accept Henry as their rightful sovereign. But his letters were in vain, and the Ghibelline hopes surrounding Henry were finally obliterated when the Emperor died of malaria near Siena in 1313. This Guelph-Ghibelline hostility forms a great deal of the political background to Dante’s COMEDY, with many of the figures he encounters in the three worlds of the afterlife having been affiliated with one party or the other. Often their allegiance in that violent struggle was responsible for earning sinners their eternal punishments. But the term Ghibellines is used only once in the entire Comedy, and that is by Emperor JUSTINIAN I in the sphere of Mercury in the Paradiso, who chides them for using

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the Imperial eagle as their insignia (Paradiso 6, ll. 100–103). The parties are alluded to elsewhere in the Comedy, however, without being named specifically: Farinata degli Uberti refers to the Ghibellines as “my party” (INFERNO 10, l. 47) and speaks of their expulsion of the Guelphs in 1248 and 1260, though Dante the pilgrim, as a hereditary Guelph, reminds Farinata that the Guelphs always return from exile. The artist ODERISI OF GUBBIO alludes to the Battle of Monataperti in PURGATORIO 11, ll. 112–113. In the Paradiso SAINT PETER himself says he is enraged by the party squabbling that has occurred in Christendom (Paradiso 27, ll. 46–54). Giacomo da Lentino (Iacopo da Lentini, “the Notary”) (early 13th century) The earliest Italian writer of lyric poetry in the courtly style and founder of the Sicilian school of poetry, Giacomo says in his poetry that he was born in Lentino (now Lentini), a Sicilian city north of Syracuse. Giacomo worked as a notary in the court of the Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA between 1223 and 1240. He was respected as the most important Italian lyric poet before GUITTONE D’AREZZO, founder of the Tuscan school of poetry. These, essentially, are the only facts known about his life. None of Giacomo’s poems survive in their original dialect, since later medieval scribes altered his language to the Tuscan dialect that had become standard in the 14th century. His more than 40 extant poems, however, tell us something of Giacomo’s intellectual life. He was familiar with the courtly love tradition as popularized by the Provençal troubadour poets and, for the first time in the Italian vernacular, follows the conventions established by those poets. Giacomo makes use of familiar motifs: The lover is the lady’s servant; he is humble before her and will perform any feat to demonstrate his nobility and worthiness to be loved by her. His love tends to be secretive because the lady is married and talebearers will carry stories to the jealous one, her husband. The lady is like a beautiful rose, and the lover like a ship tossed in the sea. But Giacomo was not simply an imitator. Influenced by the new manuscripts of ARISTOTLE and his Arabic commentators that passed through Frederick’s court, Giacomo looked at love from a more

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Giacomo (Jacopo or Jacomo) da Santo Andrea

philosophical standpoint than the troubadours had, so that Giacomo takes seriously the definition of love and its nature. In two tenzone, or debate poems, one with PIER DELLE VIGNE (Frederick’s chancellor), Giacomo speaks as an acknowledged expert on the nature of love. In the best known of his 17 canzoni, Maravigliosamente/un amor mi distringe (“Wonderfully/a love holds me bound”), Giacomo gives a philosophical discussion of the poem as a flawed reflection of the perfect form of love in the poet’s mind. It seems likely that Giacomo’s intellectual approach was influential on the later DOLCE STIL NOVO movement. But Giacomo’s most important contribution to Italian literature and to Western poetry in general was the invention of the SONNET. His 25 extant sonnets are the earliest that exist. The sonnet form, too, is an outgrowth of Giacomo’s intellectualizing of love poetry: It appears that he sought to create a poem that would display a logical relationship between the poem’s form and content, a logic demonstrated in Giacomo’s own sonnets. Dante respected Giacomo and praises one of his canzoni in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA (1.12.8) for its graceful diction. He also refers to Giacomo in the well-known passage in Canto 24, ll. 55–62 of the PURGATORIO, in which ORBI CEIANA DA LUCCA BONAGIUNTA recognizes Dante as the originator of the “sweet new style” that he admits he, Guittone, and “the Notary” had fallen short of achieving. Giacomo (Jacopo or Jacomo) da Santo Andrea (d. 1239) Giacomo was an aristocrat from the Paduan district of Santo Andrea. He had inherited a huge fortune, said to be the largest in Padua. But he became infamous for willfully destroying his own property. Benvenuto da Imola, the most important early commentator of Dante’s COMEDY, relates several anecdotes about Giacomo’s prodigality: On one occasion for example Giacomo was unable to sleep and ordered a large quantity of expensive Cyprian linen to be taken to his room and painstakingly ripped apart, so that he could fall asleep to the tearing sound. Another time while boating on the River Brenta he amused his friends by tossing money into the river, one coin at a time. Most notoriously in order to celebrate a group of

noble guests’ visit to his country estate Giacomo is said to have welcomed them by setting fire to all of the workers’ cottages and outbuildings on his great country estate. Giacomo was murdered in 1239, reportedly by agents of the tyrant Ezzelino II da Romano. Dante places Giacomo in the seventh circle of Hell, in the round of the suicides (ll. 109–129), along with another notorious squanderer, LANO OF SIENA. They are chased by a pack of black dogs, who ultimately tear Giacomo limb from limb (it is possible that Benvenuto’s story of the tearing linen is intended to suggest the appropriateness of Dante’s punishment for Giacomo). Dante implies that the willed destruction of one’s own property is parallel to suicide—the willed destruction of one’s life. Both kinds of sinners appear in circle seven. Gianni degla Alfani (ca. 1271–early 14th century) One of the lesser-known poets of the DOLCE STIL NOVO school popularized by Dante and GUIDO CAVALCANTI was Gianni degla Alfani, a Florentine whose seven extant poems are generally seen as highly derivative, emulating some of the lyrics of Cavalcanti and Dante. Six of his poems are in the traditional dance form called the ballate, a form popular among the stilnovisti. The other is a SONNET addressed to Guido Cavalcanti. Alfani’s poems imitate Cavalcanti’s in their emphasis on the suffering caused by love, and as do other stilnovist lyrics, they make use of learned imagery drawn from medieval psychology as well as from Cavalcanti’s theory of the “spirits.” Gianni departs from Cavalcanti, however, in his depiction of the moment of suffering itself, rather than of the psychological anguish of the lover’s contemplation of it after the fact. We know virtually nothing of Gianni’s biography and cannot even be certain whether we have the right Gianni Alfani. But it seems likely he was the silk merchant by that name who as was Dante was exiled from FLORENCE as a result of the bitter internecine struggle between the Black and White GUELPHs. He traveled widely as a result of his exile, but where or when he died is a mystery. His poetic reputation has not been particularly high, as some critics consider him a slavish imitator of Caval-

Giano della Bella

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canti, but others have pointed out that his focus on the individual suffering lover may in some ways have anticipated the love poetry of FRANCESCA (FRANCIS) PETRARCH.

suffering any consequences for the scheme. This broadly comic anecdote served as the kernel of the plot for Giacomo Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi, first performed in 1918.

Gianni Schicchi (d. ca. 1280) Gianni Schicchi was a member of the powerful Cavalcanti family of FLORENCE and was well known in his time as a mimic. According to a 14th-century history of Florence, Gianni could imitate the voice and mannerisms of anyone he knew. Dante places him in the 10th bolgia of circle eight of Hell, among the falsifiers. He is one of the falsifiers of persons, who runs mad through the bolgia—having lost his mind, that which would give him an identity of his own. The alchemist Griffolino, who identifies Gianni to the pilgrim Dante, alludes to the best-known story about him, the incident for which he was apparently damned to this circle. Gianni’s friend Simone Donati had an uncle, Buoso, who was on his deathbed. (Some sources say Buoso was Simone’s father, but records indicate that Buoso died a widower without a direct heir.) Simone successfully persuaded Buoso to put off making his will, but on the day Buoso actually died, Simone approached his friend Gianni Schicchi for advice. The two hatched a plan that would make good use of Gianni’s aptitude for mimicry. They first pushed Buoso’s body out of the deathbed and hid it, while Gianni put on the dead man’s nightcap and covered himself in the bed, and a notary was called with witnesses. Impersonating Buoso, whom he knew very well, Gianni dictated his will to the notary. He left a few small gifts to charities, and, to Simone’s chagrin, took the opportunity to leave 600 florins to Gianni Schicchi, along with a prize mare—purportedly the best mare in TUSCANY. The dead man’s chief heir and executor, as dictated by Gianni, was to be Simone Donati, who was also to be executor of the estate. When the will was finished and notarized, the others left the room, at which time the two conspirators put the dead man back into the bed and began to wail and moan, feigning that Buoso had passed away just then. The trick was apparently successful: There is no record of the two conspirator’s ever

Giano della Bella (ca. 1260–1321) Giano della Bella served as a tribune in FLORENCE in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. The della Bella family had received knighthood from the marquis Hugh of Brandenburg (d. 1006). Although noble by birth Giano championed the plight of the commons and was included among those that supported the Ordinamenti di Giustizia, which provided justice in the case of the mistreatment of the commons by members of the nobility. After the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO in 1289 the arrogance of the Florentine nobility in oppressing other citizens grew so intolerable that by 1292 the people of Florence demanded change. A key player in the political upheaval was Giano della Bella, who was serving as prior at the time. In 1293 he insisted upon the enforcement of the Ordinamenti di Giustizia, which called for heavy punishments of nobles who oppressed commoners, and banned any of the nobility from holding public office. The nobles were incensed at the sternness of the justice levied by Giano della Bella and the GUELPH contingency and eventually were able to undermine the commoners’ support of Giano by accusing him of misapplication of the law for his own selfish purposes. In 1295 while he was trying to quell a riot that arose when CORSO DONATI was unjustly acquitted of a murder committed during a street brawl, the crowd refused to obey Giano and threatened him instead, after which his enemies forced him into exile and subsequently confiscated all his property in Florence. Giano retired to France, where he ultimately died. In the heaven of Mars, Dante’s great-greatgrandfather, CACCIAGUIDA, alludes to Giano della Bella and his support of the common people, saying that he bears the same arms as the marquis Hugh of Brandenburg but with a border of fringe. He who bears those arms, Cacciaguida says, “today has taken up the people’s cause” (PARADISO 16, l. 132). Angela Mahan

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Giotto di Bondone

Giotto di Bondone (ca. 1266–1337) Giotto di Bondone was the most influential painter of his time, one of the pivotal figures of Western art and essentially the founder of the Tuscan tradition of painting. In Canto 11 of the PURGATORIO in a passage on the transience of fame Dante has the character of ODERISI OF GUBBIO mention how the reputation of Giotto has now surpassed that of GIOVANNI CIMABUE (CENNI DE PEPO) among the artists of FLORENCE (ll. 94–96). Chiefly on the basis of these lines subsequent biographers assumed that Cimabue had been Giotto’s teacher. A legend even grew that Giotto was a 12-year-old shepherd boy sketching his father’s sheep when Cimabue discovered him. Modern scholars generally consider this story apocryphal, and the connection between Cimabue and Giotto

The Giotto Dante (Bargello, Florence), although almost certainly executed after Dante’s death, is the only portrait definitely done by someone who knew Dante during his life. From Dante and His World, by Thomas Caldecot Chubb, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966.

mere conjecture. Certainly Giotto was influenced somewhat by Cimabue’s movement toward naturalness of expression, just as he may have been influenced by the work of the Roman painter Pietro Cavallini. But Giotto far surpassed any previous medieval artists in his natural portrayal of the human form and the dramatic expression of his figures, earning him the reputation as the founder of the Renaissance style later exploited by Donatello, Masaccio, and Michelangelo. Giotto was born in 1266 or 1267, either north of Florence in the town of Colle (near Vespignano) or, according to some accounts, in Florence itself. He was a year or two younger than Dante and is reputed to have been the poet’s friend. There is some controversy over which specific works can be attributed to him, the largest controversy surrounding the Life of Saint Francis frescoes in the upper church of SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI in Assisi. Most modern scholars believe that the Assisi frescoes show a profound influence of Giotto’s early style but that none of the paintings can be attributed to him with any certainty. As for the three paintings that bear Giotto’s signature—the Madonna and Saints originally in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Bologna, Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata now housed in the Louvre, and the Coronation of the Virgin in the Baroncelli Chapel in Florence’s church of Santa Croce—it is generally believed that the signature indicates the paintings were from Giotto’s workshop, rather than that he painted them himself. The earliest extant work ascribed undisputedly to Giotto is the great Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, painted between 1290 and 1300. The natural pose, the weight given to the body, and the realistic details of the crucifix mark it as a clear break from the Byzantine tradition that had preceded Giotto. In 1305 Giotto produced another landmark painting, his panel Madonna for the Florentine Church of Ognissanti (now in the museum of the Uffizi in Florence). By the following year Giotto was in Padua, where he was completing his magnificent cycle of 22 frescoes Life of Christ for the Scrovegni Chapel. (The exiled Dante may well have been in Padua about this time.)

Giraut de Bornelh By now Giotto was known throughout Italy. He was known to be in Naples by 1328 and was in the service of ROBERT OF ANJOU, KING OF NAPLES, by 1330. He was also invited to Milan to work for Azzone Visconti. In 1334 Giotto was back in Florence, where he had been commissioned chief architect of the cathedral—the campanile (or bell tower) is believed to have been his design. Sometime in the 1330s he executed his two most famous fresco cycles in Florence: the frescoes Life of Saint Francis in the Bardi Chapel and the frescoes of SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST and SAINT JOHN THE APOSTLE in the Peruzzi Chapel, both in the church of Santa Croce. Giotto died in Florence on January 8, 1337. Dante praises Giotto in the Purgatorio but never implies any personal relationship with the artist. Such a relationship has been assumed, though, since the time of early commentators on the COMEDY. It is certainly possible that Dante knew Giotto in Florence, or that he and Giotto were companions in Padua. But there is no real evidence of this. A portrait of Dante standing beside BRUNETTO LATINI in the Bargello in Florence has been attributed to Giotto, but that attribution is far from certain. Giovanna (1291–ca. 1339) Giovanna was the daughter and only child of the Pisan GUELPH leader NINO (UGOLINO) VISCONTI and Beatrice d’Este, sister of the notorious Azzo VIII d’Este (in PURGATORIO 5, ll. 77–78). Nino was the judge of Galuria in Sardinia, who from 1285 to 1288 shared the office of podestà of PISA with his grandfather, Count UGOLINO DELLA GHERARDESCA. Dante depicts Ugolino in the lowest depths of Hell in Canto 33 of the INFERNO, where he gnaws on the head of the archbishop RUGGIERI DEGLI UBALDINI DELLA PILA, his coconspirator in betraying his grandson Nino and forcing him to flee Pisa. Nino died in 1296, when his daughter was five years old. POPE BONIFACE VIII, in recognition of her father’s services to the church in the Guelph cause, granted Giovanna the “guardianship” of the city of Volterra. The GHIBELLINEs, however, soon wrested all her property from her, and Giovanna spent several years living with her mother in Ferrara and Milan. In 1308 Giovanna married Riccardo da Cammino, the unpopular tyrant of Treviso. Ric-

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cardo was the son of the “good Gherardo” extolled by MARCO LOMBARDO (MARCO THE LOMBARD) in Purgatorio 16, l. 124, is himself condemned by CUNIZZA DA ROMANO in PARADISO 9 (l. 49) as one who “lords over [Treviso] with lofty head.” After Riccardo was assassinated while playing chess in 1312, Giovanna was left penniless. Ultimately Giovanna took refuge in FLORENCE, where in 1323 in recognition of her father’s services the city granted her a pension. The date of her death is uncertain, though one early source says that she did not outlive her mother. Giovanna was certainly dead by 1339. When the pilgrim Dante meets Nino Visconti in the Valley of Princes in Canto 8 of the Purgatorio (ll. 70–81), Nino greets him as an old friend, complains of his widow, Beatrice’s, marriage to Galeazzo Visconti of Milan (who would ultimately die in poverty), and requests that his innocent daughter be asked to pray for her father’s soul. Giovanna’s innocence may be the result of her being only nine years old at the fictional date of the COMEDY. Giraut de Bornelh (Guiraut de Borneil) (ca. 1138–ca. 1212) One of the best-known and most influential of the Provençal troubadours, Giraut de Bornelh is the author of 77 extant lyric poems, about half of which are cansos (love songs). He also wrote in other genres, including albas (dawn songs) and tensons (debate poems). His best known debate poem is a tenson written with Raimbaut d’Orange, in which Giraut defends the troubadour style known as trobar leu, the straightforward or clear style of verse, while Raimbaut supports the trobar clus, the complex style. Giraut wrote most of his verse in the trobar leu, though he also wrote some in the trobar clus style. It may be that he wrote in the more obscure style when he was younger but adopted the trobar leu later. But it is also possible that Giraut wrote in different styles for different patrons: These comprised most of the important noblemen of Provençe and northern Spain, including Ferdinand II of Leon, Alfonso VIII of Castile, Raymond V of Toulouse, as well as Alfonso II of Aragon (with whom he composed a tenson on whether a king or a knight was better for a lady to love) and Adémar V of

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Limoges (whom he accompanied on the Third Crusade in 1192). Giraut also knew many of his fellow 12th-century troubadours: In addition to the tenson with Raimbaut d’Orange Giraut later composed a lament upon Raimbaut’s death. His fellow poet PEIRE D’ALVERNHE (PETRUS DE ALVÈRNIA, OR PETER OF AUVERGNE) wrote a satirical poem in which he pokes fun at Giraut, claiming he looks like a driedout goatskin. His contemporary poets respected his talent and called him “master of the troubadours”; more of his lyrics survive than of any other 12thcentury troubadour. Dante admired Giraut, particularly for the morality of his verses, and in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA (2.2.9) he calls Giraut the “poet of rectitude,” as he calls ARNAUT DANIEL (ARNAUD) the “poet of love” and BERTRAN DE BORN the “poet of arms.” But in Canto 26 of the PURGATORIO Dante has the Italian love poet GUIDO GUINIZELLI assert that only fools hold Giraut to be a better poet than Arnaut Daniel—Arnaut, Guinizelli says, is the “better craftsman.” What we know of Giraut’s life is gained chiefly from his early vida (short biography)—although these are generally unreliable and tend to be assembled from details in the poems. Giraut seems to have been born to parents of humble means in the Dorgogne region but was able to acquire a good education. He is said to have spent the winters in study and the summers traveling between courts, with two singers to perform his lyrics. According to the vida he never married, and he died in the church of Saint Gervais, where he was a benefactor and lived out his final years. Godfrey of Bouillon (ca. 1058–1100) The bestknown Christian hero of the First Crusade and the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, Godfrey de Bouillon was honored in the late Middle Ages as one of the “Nine Worthies of the World”—an artistic and literary convention that included three pagans (Hector of Troy, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, and GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR), three Old Testament heroes (Joshua, KING DAVID, and JUDAS MACCABEUS), and three Christian heroes (King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey) as the greatest military heroes of his-

tory. Dante places Godfrey in the heaven of Mars, where he is one of the great lights of the Church Militant pointed out by CACCIAGUIDA in PARADISO 18, l. 47. Godfrey was born in Baisy in Belgium, the son of Count Eustace II of Bouillon. He served the emperor Henry IV in his struggle with Pope Gregory VII over the investiture controversy, and in the emperor’s war against Rudoph of Swabia, and in gratitude for his faithful service Henry made Godfrey duke of Lower Lorraine and marquis of Antwerp in about 1088. When Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade to recapture the Holy Land from the Turks in 1095, Duke Godfrey was among the first of the great nobles to respond. He is reported to have mortgaged his lands in order to pay the tens of thousands of Flemings, Walloons, and Germans who made up his huge army. With his brothers, Baldwin and Eustace, Godfrey set out for Jerusalem in 1096. Godfrey was the first of the crusaders to reach Constantinople in January 1097 and thus was the first to swear allegiance to the Byzantine emperor, Alexius I Comnenus, in exchange for continued Byzantine support for his army. He took part in the successful campaigns against Nicaea and Antioch but earned his lasting fame at the five-week siege of Jerusalem in 1099. His followers were the first to break through the walls of the city and began the wholesale massacre of the city’s Muslims and Jews that followed. Godfrey himself is reported to have stripped off his armor after entering the city and to have walked barefoot through the carnage to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Godfrey was subsequently chosen ruler of the first Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, though the pious Godfrey refused the title king and accepted, instead, the designation Defender of the Holy Sepulcher. Although he reigned for only one year, Godfrey was successful in repelling Saracen attempts to retake the city and defeated the sultan of Egypt in the Battle of Ascalon. He rebuilt Jaffa and made it into a Latin port, and he put several nearby Syrian cities under the rule of the Latin Kingdom. He was known for his fair and impartial rule, and when he died of disease in July 1100 he was mourned by Christian and Muslim

Gregory the Great 459 alike. He was succeeded by his brother, Baldwin I (who took the title of king). Godfrey’s prominence as the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem made him a popular hero in Western Europe and the central figure in various legends, celebrated in the widely read French narratives known as chansons de geste. He was buried in Jerusalem, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; the tomb was destroyed in the early 19th century. Gomita of Gallura, Fra (d. ca. 1295) Gomita was a Sardinian friar (of which order is not known) who in 1294 was appointed chancellor of Gallura, the northeast province of Sardinia. At that time Sardinia was a possession of the Pisans, who had divided the island into four administrative judicial districts (Gallura, Arborea, Cagliari, and Logudoro). Fra Gomita had been named deputy by NINO (UGOLINO) VISCONTI, who from 1275 to 1296 was Pisan judge of Gallura (Dante places Visconti among the late repentant in Canto 8 of the PURGATORIO). Fra Gomita became notorious for his abuses of power, notably for making a large profit by selling public offices in Gallura to the highest bidder. Despite numerous complaints about his deputy’s abuses, Visconti maintained his trust of the friar, until he learned that Fra Gomita had accepted bribes to allow some of Visconti’s prisoners to escape. When he discovered that these charges were true, Visconti immediately ordered that Fra Gomita be hanged. Dante places Fra Gomita in the fifth bolgia of circle eight in the INFERNO (Canto 22), immersed in boiling pitch among the barrators (those who betrayed the public trust by engaging in graft while in office). Here he is said to be conversing with another notorious Sardinian grafter, MICHEL ZANCHE (former governor of Logudoro). Gregory the Great (Pope Gregory I) (ca. 540– 604) Considered the last of the fathers of the Western Church, Gregory the Great exerted a profound influence on the theology, organization, and discipline of the medieval Catholic Church and its subsequent development. It was Gregory who enforced celibacy among the clergy, made explicit the doc-

trine of Purgatory, and secured the recognition of papal authority throughout Western Christendom. He was born into a prominent Roman family and was well educated in anticipation of a career in law. In about 573 he was made prefect of Rome, a position he held for three years. But upon the death of his father, a Roman senator, Gregory gave much of his wealth to charitable organizations and used the rest to found six monasteries in Sicily and one in Rome, ultimately becoming a Benedictine monk himself. But even in the monastery and despite his preference for a rigorous ascetic lifestyle, Gregory’s education and natural leadership rose to the surface and he became a deacon of Rome in service to Pope Pelagius II, whom he represented at the imperial court in Constantinople from 578 to 585, after which he returned to monastic life. He had been appointed abbot in 579. But in 590 apparently over his own protests Gregory was elected pope (the first monk to be so honored). He rose to power at a tumultuous time for Rome: Lombard invasions had reduced much of Italy to poverty and ruin. The emperor in Constantinople favored the patriarch of his own city over the bishop of Rome with regard to primacy within the church. And the imperial authority in the West had been established in RAVENNA, which now rivaled Rome as a political center. Gregory used the wealth of the papacy to ease the poverty and develop agricultural production on the devastated church properties. He dealt directly with the Lombards to establish peace (after 30 years of war) rather than relying on the imperial forces in Ravenna or Constantinople. His charitable works made him beloved among Christians of the West, and his pastoral attitude is summed up well in the title by which he referred to himself: Servus servorum Dei (Servant of the servants of God). Gregory also sent Saint Augustine of Canterbury and a group of Benedictine monks as the first missionary delegation to Anglo-Saxon England and sent other missionaries to France, Spain, and Africa, extending the reach of Christianity in the west and the authority of the Roman pope. Gregory is credited with a number of liturgical innovations, such as the development of the Gregorian chant and the so-called Gregorian Sacramentary, a guide for the liturgical year that was

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popular in the High Middle Ages. But it is hard to determine just how much Gregory had to do with either of these developments. His Liber regulae pastoralis (Book of Pastoral Rule), a book later translated into English by King Alfred the Great, was a practical guide for local bishops on how to care for their parishioners. Gregory also wrote a collection of saints’ legends that was popular for several centuries and published a collection of his own sermons on the book of Ezekiel and on the Gospels, as well as a collection of his own letters. As a thinker Gregory was insightful and practical, and as a writer he was at his best when popularizing the thought of SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO. Gregory’s best-known writings were commentaries on biblical texts, the most important of which was his Moralia in Job. In these commentaries Gregory helps popularize the multileveled allegorical reading of the scriptures that Dante uses as a model for his own composition of the COMEDY: Gregory looks at each individual passage in what he calls its literal, mystical, and moral senses. In the Comedy Beatrice mentions Gregory in connection with his theoretical hierarchy of angels, which she says was incorrect, citing the order outlined by DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE as the accurate version (PARADISO 28, l. 133). Dante also alludes twice (PURGATORIO 10, l. 75, and Paradiso 20, ll. 106–117) to the popular medieval legend that the Emperor TRAJAN (MARCUS ULPIUS TRAJANUS) was released from Hell and allowed to repent and ultimately enter Paradise through the intercessory prayers of Pope Gregory. Griffolino da Arezzo (d. ca. 1272) Among the falsifiers in Canto 29 of the INFERNO one of the sinners addresses Dante, identifying himself only as a citizen of AREZZO. Nothing is known about this sinner beyond the story he briefly outlines in this canto (ll. 109–120), but his tale is elaborated somewhat by Dante’s early commentators, who consistently identify him as Griffolino da Arezzo. According to these sources and Dante’s own text Griffolino was a magician and alchemist with a gift for persuasive speech. He befriended the somewhat dim-witted Albero da Siena, purported to be the son of the bishop of Siena. Griffolino is

said to have taken advantage of Albero’s gullibility on a number of occasions and thereby extracted a good deal of money and a number of valuable gifts from him. At one point Griffolino convinced Albero that he was able to fly and that he could teach Albero to do so as well—telling him, according to one commentator, that the great advantage to being able to fly would be that if there were any woman in Siena whom Albero fancied, he could simply fly into her house through the open window. Griffolino must have been able to swindle a good deal of money from Albero with this ruse, but finally, when it dawned on Albero that he was being cheated, he complained to his father, the bishop. The vengeful bishop set up an inquiry to try Griffolino for practicing necromancy. Found guilty, Griffolino was burned at the stake. Dante’s Griffolino makes it clear, however, that he was consigned to this circle of Hell not for sorcery, but rather for the sin of alchemy, the falsifying of precious metals. In Hell he is punished by leprous scabs that cover his body and assail his senses. Guelph (Guelf) The Guelphs, a political party that began in Germany in the early 12th century, were associated with forces that resisted the antipapal tendencies of the Hohenstaufen rulers (the term Guelph is derived from the German Welf, a prominent family of anti-Hohenstaufen dukes of Bavaria). As the party spread into the cities of central and northern Italy in the 13th century, the Guelphs became solidified as the party of the pope as opposed to the GHIBELLINEs, the party who supported the Imperial interests of FREDERICK II OF SWABIA and his followers. The Guelphs were generally made up of the middle class or the lower nobility, whose interests were commercial and who supported self-governance for the Italian cities as opposed to Imperial control. In Italy the two factions often became embroiled in local concerns that had little to do with the original principles that spawned the parties. In FLORENCE the bitter feuding between the two groups began when young Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti broke off his engagement to a lady of the Amidei family in order to marry one of the Donati

Guido da Montefeltro clan. The Amidei took revenge by assassinating Buondelmonte on the Ponte Vecchio in 1215, after which the Guelph faction united behind the Buondelmonti, and the Ghibellines behind the Amidei. The consequent feud saw the Guelphs exiled in 1248 by the Ghibellines with the help of Frederick II and the Guelphs’ return to Florence upon Frederick’s death in 1250. This was followed by the exile of the Ghibellines in 1258 and the subsequent Ghibelline victory under FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI at the battle of Montaperti in 1260, and yet again by the Guelph victory at the Battle of Benevento in 1266. A final Guelph victory in 1289 at the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO crushed Ghibelline hopes, which were dealt a death blow 20 years later when Emperor HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG died while trying to reassert Imperial authority in Italy in 1313. Dante, whose family was traditionally Guelph, became a White Guelph (BIANCHI) when the party split in the late 13th century, and the Whites ultimately became allies of the Ghibellines against the Black Guelphs (NERI). But Dante plays no favorites in the COMEDY, assigning Guelphs and Ghibellines to equal time in Hell and Purgatory. The word Guelphs is used only once in the entire Comedy, however, by Emperor JUSTINIAN I in the heaven of Mercury (PARADISO 6, ll. 106), where he condemns the party for allying with CHARLES OF ANJOU against the Holy Roman Empire. Guido da Montefeltro (1223–1298) The most important GHIBELLINE military leader in Romagna, Guido da Montefeltro became known as “the fox” and earned a reputation as the most cunning military strategist in Italy. But after Guido used that skill to assist POPE BONIFACE VIII in a war against fellow Christians, Dante immortalized him by placing him in the circle of evil counselors in Canto 27 of the INFERNO. Guido led a Ghibelline army to victory over Malatesta da Rimini’s GUELPH troops in June and again in September 1275. He occupied the cities of Cervia and Cesena, sending Malatesta into exile. In 1282 he defeated a combined French and Italian force sent by Pope Martin IV to try to take the city of Forli. But he was expelled from Forli in 1283

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when the city made peace with the pope. Guido was able to make peace with the newly elected Pope Honorius IV in 1288 but accepted banishment to Piedmont, from which he returned in 1289 to accept the leadership of the Ghibellines in PISA. Pope Honorius excommunicated Guido and placed Pisa under interdict. Undaunted, Guido led the Pisans to several victories over the Florentine Guelphs, taking over Urbino in 1292 and holding it against his old enemy Malatesta da Rimini. But when Pisa made peace with FLORENCE, Guido was again expendable, and he was discharged from Pisa in 1293. Soon after Guido was again reconciled with the church, and in 1296 he retired from military life and entered the Franciscan order. In 1297 Guido was once more drawn back into partisan Italian politics, this time by the newly elected POPE BONIFACE VIII. In 1294 Boniface had convinced POPE CELESTINE V to renounce the papacy to live a contemplative life, and Boniface himself was elected to replace him. The Colonna family, whose palace lay close by the pope’s own residence at the Lateran, disputed Boniface’s election and called Celestine’s resignation invalid. By 1297 Boniface had excommunicated the Colonna family, who were now holed up in their fortress at Palestrina, 25 miles east of Rome. Unable to penetrate the fortress or force the Colonna out, Boniface called upon the newly made Franciscan friar, Guido da Montefeltro. On Guido’s advice Boniface offered the Colonna a generous amnesty. When the Colonna accepted the pope’s offer and left the castle, Boniface destroyed it, leaving the Colonna with no refuge. Guido died in the same month that Boniface defeated the Colonna—September 1298. In the bolgia of evil counselors in circle eight of Hell the pilgrims Dante and Virgil have just finished listening to the soul of ULYSSES when they are approached by another spirit engulfed in flame. After responding at length to his questions about the current political climate of Romagna, Dante asks the spirit his name and his story. In a speech later used by T. S. Eliot as the epigraph to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Guido tells Dante that if he thought anyone in the mortal world would hear of his sin, he would say no more. But since he believes no one has ever returned to the world from

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this depth of Hell, he will answer the poet’s request (Canto 27, ll. 61–66). Calling Boniface the “prince of the new Pharisees,” Guido describes the pope’s enlisting his aid against the Colonna. According to Guido’s speech Boniface promised him absolution for his evil counsel, and it was only with the pope’s assurance of salvation that Guido agreed to give Boniface his advice—and since the pope had already absolved his sin, he never repented. Upon Guido’s death as Dante tells it, SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI appeared in order to gather his soul to Heaven, but a black cherub snatched Guido’s soul from the saint, arguing that it was impossible to be absolved of a sin before committing it, since absolution demanded the intention to sin no more. Thus by trusting in the fraudulent absolution of an evil pope, Guido damned himself (ll. 67–129). In a deliberate parallel Dante depicts Guido’s son, Buonconte (in Canto 5 of the PURGATORIO, ll. 94–129), among the late repentant. When Buonconte tells his own story, it has a similar end, in which a good angel and an evil angel struggle for his soul. In Buonconte’s case the outcome is the opposite of his father’s: His true repentance, though late, is enough to save him. Guido del Duca (d. ca. 1229) Guido del Duca may have been the son of Giovanni degli Onesti, a member of the powerful Duchi family of RAVENNA. Giovanni ultimately settled in Bertinoro, where Guido seems to have been born. In 1195 Guido was a judge in Faenza, and by May 1199 he was serving as a judge under the podestà of Rimini. Guido was a GHIBELLINE in politics and apparently was close to Mainardi of Bertinoro. In 1218 Mainardi supported the prominent Ghibelline Pier Traversaro when the latter took power in Ravenna and exiled all the city’s GUELPHs. Those Guelphs retaliated by seizing control of Bertinoro. They razed Mainardi’s houses and expelled Mainardi’s Ghibelline allies, including Guido del Duca and his family. Guido fled to Ravenna, where he lived under the protection of Pier Traversaro until at least 1229, when his name appears as a witness to a deed. This is the last record of Guido, and it is assumed that he died shortly after that date.

Dante places Guido on the terrace of envy in the PURGATORIO (Canto 14), where, upon hearing that Dante is from TUSCANY, he delivers a long diatribe about the inhabitants on the shore of that river, all of whom he declares are beasts, as wild as the river itself. He follows this with a lament for his own region of Romagna, declaring that there are no great leaders anymore—naming, among others, Mainardi and Pier Traversaro as statesmen who have no true successors in that degenerate country (ll. 97–98). Guido Guerra (ca. 1220–1272) A member of the powerful Conti Guidi family of FLORENCE, Guido Guerra was a GUELPH political and military leader. He was the son of Marcovaldi, the fourth son of Guido Guerra IV and the legendary Gualdrada de’ Ravignani. Gualdrada’s beauty and virtue were legendary, and a story grew that she had so impressed Emperor Otto IV that he had married her to one of his valued retainers and given the couple a large estate. That legend is certainly apocryphal, since Guido and Gualdrada are known to have had two children by 1202, seven years before Otto’s first visit to Italy. But it does underscore Gualdrada’s reputation. It also underscores the family’s relationship to the Imperial party, for they were most certainly GHIBELLINE. Guido thus broke with family tradition by supporting the Guelph cause. Guido earned his own reputation as a leader in battle; his nickname Guerra means “war.” His relief of Mostina from a Ghibelline siege in 1250 inspired the Florentine Guelphs, and in 1255 he was able to drive the Ghibellines (temporarily) out of AREZZO. Thus he was speaking with the wisdom of experience when he warned his fellow Florentines not to attempt their ill-advised campaign against Siena in 1260. The Sienese Ghibellines, strongly reinforced by mercenaries, crushed the Guelphs at the Battle of Montperti. As a result of that battle the Guelphs were expelled from Florence and fled to Romagna. Here for six years Guido was the de facto leader of the party. In 1266 Guido was one of the leaders of the Guelph army that helped CHARLES OF ANJOU defeat MANFRED and the Ghibelline forces at the

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Battle of Benevento. As a result of that victory the Guelphs returned to Florence and the Ghibellines were ousted from the city permanently. Guido died in 1272 in Montevarchi. Dante places Guido Guerra in circle seven of the INFERNO, with the sodomites or the “violent against nature.” Here in Canto 16 Guido, with two other Florentine Guelph military heroes of the generation before Dante (TEGGHIAIO ALDOBRANDI and JACOPO RUSTICUCCI), accosts Dante and asks the poet whether courtesy and valor still reign in Florence. After Dante speaks to them of the decline of the city, Guido and the others leave him, asking that he keep alive their reputations.

cousin, Ostasio da Polenta. He was unsuccessful, even with Bolognese aid, in regaining control of the city and died in exile in Bologna in 1323. A good deal of the history of Ravenna is present in Dante’s Comedy. The tragic story of FRANCESCA DA RIMINI, the daughter of Guido da Polenta (and hence the aunt of Guido Novello), fills Canto 5 of the INFERNO. In lines 40–41 of Inferno’s Canto 27 Dante uses the image of the brooding eagle in the Polenta family coat of arms as a metaphor for the protection provided for Ravenna by the Polenta family. But nowhere does Dante include a reference to his last benefactor, Guido Novello.

Guido Novello da Polenta (d. 1323) As a politician, poet, and patron of the arts Guido Novello da Polenta personified the ideal of a Renaissance man. His family, the Polenta, were a noble GUELPH family who governed the city of RAVENNA from the late 13th century until the middle of the 15th century. The Polenta began to control Ravenna when Guido da Polenta the elder, the grandfather of Guido Novello, defeated rival factions to seize power in the 1270s. It was his grandson, Guido Novello da Polenta, who had a direct effect on the life of Dante Alighieri. Guido Novello da Polenta became podestà (chief magistrate) of Ravenna in October 1316. During the final years of Dante’s life Guido showed the esteemed poet great hospitality and honor by inviting Dante to stay in Ravenna. Whether Dante was forced to seek refuge with Guido or simply chose to accept his hospitality is in some dispute, given the debate regarding the political situation of Dante toward the end of his life. It is generally accepted that Dante went to Ravenna around 1318 to the delight of Guido Novello. While in Ravenna Dante completed the COMMEDIA. Dante’s last official duty was as an ambassador for Guido Novello da Polenta to Venice. While returning to Ravenna, Dante fell ill of a fever (probably malaria), and he died in Ravenna on September 13–14, 1321. Guido Novello was greatly saddened by Dante’s death and gave the poet an elaborate and honorable burial. Soon after in 1322 Guido Novello da Polenta lost authority to his

Guinizelli, Guido (ca. 1230–1276) One of the most influential Italian lyric poets before Dante was the Bolognese jurist Guido Guinizelli. Although only 15 of his SONNETs and five canzoni have survived, Guinizelli’s most famous poem, the CANZONE “Al cor gentil” (“The Gentle Heart”), became for Dante and GUIDO CAVALCANTI a model for their new poetic school, the DOLCE STIL NOVO (sweet new style). There are two known late 13th-century figures named Guido Guinizelli; probably the poet was a prominent jurist, son of Guinizello da Magnano, a member of the Principi family of Bologna. The Principi were allied with the influential Lambertazzi, a GHIBELLINE family who dominated Bolognese politics. Guido became a judge in 1266 and in 1270 was made podestà (foreign-born head of government) of Castelfranco. As an important Ghibelline Guinizelli was forced into exile (probably at Monselice) after the Bolognese Ghibellines were defeated by the GUELPHs in 1274. He died two years later, possibly in Padua. Guinizelli began by emulating the Tuscan school of GUITTONE D’AREZZO, whom he looked up to and in one poem calls “father.” But Guinizelli surpassed his master and took poetry in a new direction with “Al cor gentil,” in which he created a new learned poetic vocabulary and a new kind of metaphysical imagery. Guittone himself, and other Tuscan poets like ORBIERCIANA DA LUCCA BONAGIUNTA condemned Guinizelli’s poetic language as inappropriate. But the poets of the Dolce stil novo were

Josh Markham

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inspired by Guinizelli to introduce new scientific and philosophical imagery into courtly love poetry. Dante praises him in both DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA and the CONVIVIO. In Canto 26 of his PURGATORIO Dante extols Guinizelli as the founder of the new poetry. In his “Al cor gentil” Guinizelli asserts that love can only be found in the gentle heart (that is, the truly noble heart) and implies that his is such a heart, perfected by love. His lady, he says, is like an angel of God. In imagery borrowed from medieval astronomy Guinizelli compares himself to an “intelligence”—an angel who moves one of the spheres of Heaven. Just as the angel follows God’s will perfectly, so the poet follows his lady’s will. At the end of the poem Guinizelli imagines being called before God’s throne to answer for his profane comparison: His defense will be simply that the lady looked exactly like an angel—who could blame him if he was confused? Perhaps it was the end of this poem that inspired Dante to place Guinizelli in the seventh terrace of Purgatory, the circle of the lustful. In Canto 26 of the Purgatorio, where the lustful are being purified by flames, one of the souls notices that Dante casts a shadow and asks for an explanation. After Dante explains that he is alive, he asks the spirit what sins are being atoned for here, and the spirit first describes the forms of lust being expiated and ends by mentioning his own name: Guido Guinizelli. Dante rejoices to hear Guido’s name and calls him “father,” acknowledging his immense influence on Dante’s lyrics. Guido himself modestly demurs, pointing out another spirit in the same place, the Provençal poet ARNAUT DANIEL (ARNAUD), whom Guinizelli calls the “better craftsman” of vernacular poetry. Finally, asking that Dante pray for him, Guinizelli disappears back into the purifying flames. Guiscard, Robert (ca. 1015–1085) The Norman warlord Robert “The Cunning,” duke of Apulia and Calabria, was the eldest son of Tancred de Hauteville’s second marriage. Tancred had 12 sons; Robert’s most notable brothers were William “Iron Arm,” Drogo, and Humphrey from Tancred’s first marriage, and Roger, the youngest son from the

second marriage. Large families with landless noble sons like Tancred’s were common among the warlike Normans. Robert, like many of his contemporaries, was forced to leave Normandy and find his fortune elsewhere. He arrived in 1047 in Apulia, where his brothers William and Drogo had already established a Norman presence. Robert soon made his mark in Calabria by ransoming notables, maiming peasants, and pillaging the countryside. Eventually Robert’s brutal tactics managed to incense not only the Byzantines, but also the Lombards, Pope Leo IX, and the German emperor, Henry III, who all resented the Norman newcomers. In 1053 matters came to a head. At the Battle of Civitate Robert led the Normans to a pulverizing victory over a scrambled alliance of Byzantines, Lombards, and papal forces. Instead of again challenging the obviously superior Normans, the papacy’s attitude grew more flexible. The Great Schism of 1054 also had an influence on Pope Nicholas II, Leo’s successor, in relation to papal policy toward the Normans as opposed to the Byzantines. At the Synod of Melfi (1059) Nicholas granted a lawful title to Robert, who henceforth became count of Apulia. This alliance helped Rome in its goal of expelling the Saracens and the Greeks (schismatics from the Roman point of view) from southern Italy and Sicily. Robert also found that his conquests had gained him a new prestige and legitimacy. Where first he had been a destroyer, Robert had now transformed himself into a benefactor and builder of churches and monasteries. He thus was instrumental in establishing the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Robert enlarged his domain after the deaths of his brothers, William and Humphrey, at the expense of their sons. His capture of Bari in 1071 ended Byzantine hegemony in southern Italy, and when he took Salerno from the Lombards in 1076 he controlled the entire region. Eventually the Byzantine emperor Michael VII, seeing that Robert could help him solidify his own tenuous hold on power, married his son to Robert’s daughter, Helen. When Michael’s enemies deposed him, they also imprisoned Helen in a monastery. This affront to Robert’s honor rekindled his ambition for glory. He decided to conquer Byzantium and crown him-

Guittone d’Arezzo self emperor, in place of the dethroned Michael. After initial success in Epirus Robert was forced to return to Italy to suppress a revolt and rescue Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand) from a siege by the German emperor, Henry IV. When Robert returned to the Adriatic coast, he died of pestilence on the island of Cephalonia in 1085. Robert Guiscard is mentioned twice in The Divine Comedy. In Canto 28 of the INFERNO Dante tells us that many schismatics or sowers of discord, such as those here in the ninth bolgia, had “felt the blows / when they stood up against great Robert Guiscard.” This passage refers to the Saracens and Byzantines, who had controlled the south of Italy prior to the Norman conquest of the region. It was for this service to the church that Dante places Robert in the Heaven of Mars among such defenders of the faith as Charlemagne and GODFREY DE BOULLION (PARADISO 18, l. 48). Don Smith Guittone d’Arezzo (ca. 1230–1294) As the leader of the Tuscan school of Italian poetry Guittone d’Arezzo represented precisely the kind of poetry that Dante, GUIDO CAVALCANTI, and the rest of the DOLCE STIL NOVO poets disdained in favor of their own “sweet new style.” But Guittone was an influential poet whose disciples, calling themselves guittoniani, eagerly followed his lead as he sought to replace the earlier Sicilian poetic tradition that had flourished with GIACOMO DA LENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINI, “THE NOTARY”) at the court in Naples. As the Neopolitan court declined, a new poetic inspiration was needed, and Guittone provided it. He was prolific: Some 251 of his SONNETs are extant, in addition to 50 canzoni and other poems as well. Maintaining the troubadour forms that had inspired the Sicilians, Guittone forged a new poetry that shunned the values of the aristocratic court and focused on the concerns of the bourgeois municipal citizens of northern Italy: concerns such as ambition, self-sufficiency, personal energy and merit, and

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the earning of reward through hard work. But Guittone expressed his middle-class values in a highflown style, borrowing a great number of words from Latin and Provençal and using more complex sentence structure and rhetorical figures than had been common in the Sicilian school. This was one of Dante’s major complaints about Guittone: His rhetoric was excessive, according to Dante, making his verse unclear. In addition Dante found the sentiments of Guittone’s poetry to be common. In his own poetry Dante strove for a less complex vocabulary and sentence structure. He sought a new kind of exclusiveness, based not on aristocratic birth but on intelligence, and therefore used learned imagery drawn from the medieval sciences—values that would have been completely foreign to Guittone. Guittone was born near the Tuscan city of AREZZO, FLORENCE’s great GHIBELLINE rival. His father was a public official. Guittone himself seems to have been a merchant of some sort and traveled a good deal. He was a member of the GUELPH party and was exiled from Arezzo when the Ghibellines gained power there in 1256. As Dante did, he visited a number of cities in his exile, acquainting him with other poets and with powerful men as he traveled through PISA, Bologna, and Florence. He bewailed the Guelph defeat at Montaperti in a poem from 1260. A turning point of Guittone’s life occurred when he experienced a spiritual crisis in 1266. He joined the religious order called the Knights of the Blessed Virgin Mary (nicknamed the Jovial Friars), leaving behind his wife and children, as well as his interest in secular love poetry. From that moment he turned his poetic interests to morality, politics, and religion. In 1293 apparently in failing health he donated a significant amount of money to a monastery in Florence and asked that the monks take care of him until his death, which followed in 1294. While his subsequent reputation has been somewhat damaged by Dante’s ill opinion of him, Guittone’s critical influence on the development of Italian vernacular poetry is unquestioned.

H Henry III of England (1207–1272) King Henry III inherited the English crown in 1216 at only nine years of age. He was the son of King John and the husband of Eleanor, daughter of the count of Provençe, Raymond Berenger IV. Henry’s reign was troubled—the English nobility resented the favors and positions that Henry granted to foreigners and the massive taxes Henry charged to pay for debts due to wars with Wales and France, as well as debts he had agreed to assume for the church. English nationalism began to assert itself under Henry as the aristocracy united against him, and the country was for a time governed by Simon de Montfort, a baron who had defeated and imprisoned the king. When Henry died in 1272, his son, Edward I, reestablished royal authority, though under reforms that had been forced through in Henry’s reign the English monarchy had been limited by law. Dante places Henry in the Ante-Purgatory (PURGATORIO 7), along with many other “negligent rulers”: RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG, Ottokar II of Bohemia, Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, Philip III the Bold of France, Henry the Fat of Navarre, PHILIP IV THE FAIR of France, Peter III of Aragon, Charles I of Anjou, Alfonso III of Aragon, James II of Aragon, and Frederick II of Sicily. Yet Henry sits alone in Purgatory, for a number of possible reasons. He may be alone because England was not part of the Holy Roman Empire. He may be alone because, unlike the others, he led a modest and simple life. Or he may be set apart because, unlike the other rulers who lament their successors’ failings, Henry

left a worthy heir in Edward I, under whom significant reforms were made in English law. Stephanie Fritts Henry VII of Luxembourg (ca. 1275–1313) The Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII was the count of Luxembourg and originally a vassal and supporter of PHILIP IV THE FAIR of France. In 1308 he was elected emperor with the support of POPE CLEMENT V over the French candidate, CHARLES OF VALOIS, Philip’s brother. It certainly was in Henry’s favor that his brother, the archbishop of Trier, was one of the electors. Pope Clement feared that a French emperor, coupled with the power of the French king, would endanger the freedom of the church, and his adviser, Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, had recommended Henry as the best candidate in Germany. After his coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1309 Henry was successful in allying himself with the Hapsburgs and increasing his own lands through the marriage of his son, John, to Elizabeth of Bohemia in 1310. Soon after he announced his intention of going to Italy to pacify the civil strife there and to be crowned in Rome, reviving a tradition that had lapsed for generations as the German emperors had ignored their supposed responsibilities in Italy. Henry’s message was received with joy in places like PISA, loyal to the Imperial cause, but with suspicion and distrust by GUELPH cities such as FLORENCE, which had enjoyed independent status too long to welcome an Imperial overlord. 466

Homer For Dante Henry’s advent provided hope that the conflicts in Italy would soon cease, and that he would soon be able to return to his native Florence. Pope Clement at first gave his blessing to Henry’s ambition. When Henry arrived at Susa with his small army of 5,000, Dante wrote his fifth Latin epistle, urging the Italian princes to welcome the emperor as a new Moses. Henry was crowned king of Lombardy in Milan on January 6, 1311—a ceremony Dante may have attended. But Florence refused to recognize Henry’s Imperial authority, and in March Dante wrote another letter, calling the Florentines iniquitous and greedy rebels and emphasizing what he saw as Henry’s messianic role. A month later he wrote to the emperor himself, urging him to move into TUSCANY and subject Florence to his authority. In January 1312 Henry did declare the Florentines to be rebels against their true emperor. But he was bogged down in a siege of Brescia and lost most of his army there. More and more he was forced to rely on GHIBELLINE support, and therefore to set himself against the partisan Guelphs. He was finally crowned in Rome on June 29, but at Saint John’s Lateran rather than Saint Peter’s, which had fallen under the control of the Guelph King ROBERT OF ANJOU, KING OF NAPLES. Thereafter Henry received no meaningful support from the pope, who directed him not to invade the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, controlled by the rebellious Robert and his Guelph league. In September Henry finally attacked Florence, but with insufficient forces, and he was compelled to lift the siege in October and retire to friendly Pisa. From there he condemned King Robert as a rebel in April 1313, and the following summer he set out to attack Naples. As he marched south, however, he was taken ill with malaria, and he died August 24 in Buonconvento near Siena. His body was taken back to Pisa and buried in the cathedral there. It is fairly certain that Dante began DE MONARCHIA amid the initial hope of Henry’s entry into Italy, and his call in that text for a universal world monarch is made with Henry VII in mind. In the Comedy the greyhound of INFERNO 1, l. 101, who will destroy the she-wolf and her iniquities, is probably an allegorical reference to Henry. Dante later

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depicts CACCIAGUIDA condemning the treachery of Clement V in betraying the noble Henry (PARADISO 17, l. 82). Finally, in the most remarkable tribute to a living soul in the Comedy Heaven itself holds open an empty throne reserved for Henry (still alive in 1300, the fictional date of the Comedy). Of this seat Beatrice says it stands open for Great Henry, who “will come / to set straight Italy before her time” (Paradiso 30, ll. 137–138) but will fail because of the treachery of Clement, whose reserved place in the circle of simonists in Hell (Inferno 19, ll. 82–87) has already been established. Homer (late eighth century B.C.E.) According to tradition Homer is the poet who composed the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two great epics that form the foundation of European literature. The earliest texts in Greek, the poems were written circa 700 B.C.E. in an Ionian dialect of Greek. This was about the time the Greeks were becoming literate, having borrowed the alphabet from the Phoenicians. Ionia, the western coast of Asia Minor, was colonized by Greeks in the centuries after the breakup of the Mycenaean city states about which Homer writes in his epics. By the eighth century Ionia was the cultural center of the Greek-speaking world. Nothing is known about Homer other than his name. Seven different Ionian cities claim to be his birthplace. One Greek tradition claimed that Homer was blind—a detail probably based on the depiction of the blind singer Demodocus in the Odyssey. But in the classical world and in subsequent medieval civilization Homer was the acknowledged master of poetry. Manuscripts of Homer were not readily available in Western Europe in Dante’s day, and in any case, Dante could read no Greek; therefore he had no direct knowledge of Homer’s poetry. Nor was there any complete translation of Homer into Latin. Dante acknowledges this in the CONVIVIO (1.7.15), where he claims that neither Homer nor any other poet can be translated without destroying the poetry itself. As would everyone else in Europe, he would have known Homer only through Latin commentaries and through a verse redaction in Latin called the Homerus Latinus, or the Pindarus Thebanus (so-called because it was supposed

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to have been a partial translation of the Iliad by Pindar). In the few places where Dante quotes specifically from Homer, he is utilizing quotations that had survived in texts by ARISTOTLE and by HORACE (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS). Despite his lack of familiarity with Homer’s verse Dante seems to have followed Virgil in considering Homer the indisputable master of classical poetry. In the PURGATORIO he has Virgil speak to PUBLIUS PAPINUS STATIUS of the “Greek / the Muses suckled more than all the rest” (22, ll. 101–102). Dante places Homer himself in Limbo, the circle of the virtuous pagans in the INFERNO. Here Homer stands at the head of a group including OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO), LUCAN (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS), and Horace as their acknowledged leader or master (Canto 4, ll. 87–88). Dante’s Homer is not pictured as blind, but rather, following a medieval tradition, holds a sword—the symbol of his poetry celebrating the martial deeds of the Greek warrior society during the Trojan War. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65 B.C.E.– 8 B.C.E.) Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known as Horace, was one of the Latin poets most admired by Dante. Dante places Horace in Limbo, the circle of the virtuous pagans in the INFERNO, along with HOMER, LUCAN (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS), and OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO). Together they form a school of master poets into which Virgil and Dante himself are welcomed when the two pilgrims enter that first circle of Hell (Canto 4, ll. 86–102). Horace was born in the town of Venusia in southeastern Italy. His father, a freed slave with a small farm, sent the boy to Rome for his education, and at 19 the young man traveled to Athens to study philosophy. But in 42 B.C.E. in the midst of the civil war that followed the assassination of GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR, Horace joined the army of MARCUS JUNIUS BRUTUS and CASSIUS (GAIUS CASSIUS LONGINUS), attaining the rank of tribune. He fought with Brutus at Philippi, where they were crushed by Marc Antony and Octavian. As a result of this defeat Horace’s family farm was confiscated. Now 24, Horace began to build a new life as a clerk in a public office. He started writing verse

in his spare time, apparently to make some extra money. At some point he become acquainted with Virgil and possibly through Virgil was introduced to Maecenas, minister to the emperor Octavian, now known as Caesar Augustus. Maecenas became his patron, and soon Horace was on friendly terms with the emperor himself. His first poetic works, the Satires (Sermones), were published in about 34 B.C.E. These are verse forms in dactylic hexameter (like Virgil’s AENEID), written in a natural, conversational style that was close to prose. Shortly thereafter in 33 B.C.E. Maecenas gave Horace a new farm in the rich Sabine country northeast of Rome. Horace, now able to devote his life to literary pursuits, began to experiment with a variety of verse forms borrowed from the Greeks. He published a book of Epodes in about 30 B.C.E. and later in about 23 B.C.E. three books of Odes. He followed these with a book of verse Epistles in about 20 B.C.E., in which he returned to the more conversational style of the earlier Satires. Horace wrote on a variety of subjects, composing poems on topical political themes, on everyday problems, on personal matters, on love. Often he wrote about life on his farm and the pleasures he derived from his private, rural existence. One of his Epistles, however, became particularly influential through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This was his Epistle to the Pisos, otherwise known as Ars poetica (The Art of Poetry). This text is the only sustained piece of literary theory produced by any classical Latin writer. Here Horace defined the twofold purpose of poetry: to teach and to delight. This often-quoted phrase became a cornerstone of literary criticism well into the Enlightenment. After Virgil died in 19 B.C.E. Horace’s reputation was such that he in effect became poet laureate. Augustus himself commissioned him to write the Carmen saeculare (“Secular Hymn”), which appeared in 17 B.C.E. and praised Augustus’s reforms of Roman society. It was also at Augustus’s urging that he wrote a fourth book of Odes, which Horace dutifully published in 13 B.C.E. He died in 8 B.C.E., the most acclaimed poet in Rome. Dante refers to Horace as “the satirist” (Inferno 4, l. 89), although nowhere in his poetry does Dante quote or allude to any of the Satires. It has been sug-

Hugh Capet gested that the line implies that Horace is a “moralist,” a quality that explains his presence among the virtuous pagans. But Dante may have simply been employing what Horace had called himself in the Ars poetica. This latter text was quite familiar to Dante, who refers to it at least four times. He mentions Horace and the Ars poetica in the VITA NUOVA (25.9) and the CONVIVIO (2.13.10). He also borrows from the Epistles in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA (2.1.9), but never from the Odes or the Satires, suggesting that he had no direct knowledge of either of those texts. Hugh Capet (ca. 938–996) Hugh Capet was king of France and founder of the Capetian line of kings who ruled France from 987 until 1328. Son of Hugh I (or Hugh the Great), the powerful duke of Paris and Orleans whose lands he inherited in 956, Hugh Capet was elected king of France upon the death of Louis V, the last of the Carolingian line of kings. Hugh’s mother was Hedwig, sister of the German emperor Otto I. Hugh was elected unanimously in a council at Senlis with German support, with the endorsement of the nobles of France, and with the enthusiastic support of Adalberon, archbishop of Reims—who argued for Hugh’s election over the Carolingian heir Charles of Lorraine on the basis that Hugh’s nobility and virtuous character outweighed Charles’s hereditary claims. Hugh was subsequently crowned by Adalberon in Reims on Christmas Day 988. In order to ensure the succession of the throne, Hugh had himself crowned

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jointly with his son, Robert, who became king in his own right upon Hugh’s death. Hugh’s reign was mainly spent defending his throne against Charles and his Carolingian supporters. His powers as king were largely theoretical, and the only lands he could truly exert his sovereignty over were those he had inherited from his father. Late in his reign he became embroiled in a controversy with the pope when Hugh deposed the archbishop of Reims, Adalberon’s successor, who had supported and aided Charles of Lorraine. Dante places Hugh Capet on the terrace of the avaricious in Canto 20 of the PURGATORIO. Here Hugh condemns his descendants in the Capetian line of kings for their vicious greed, in particular reviling CHARLES OF VALOIS for his invasion of Italy and claiming the crown of Sicily, CHARLES OF ANJOU for his occupation of the city of FLORENCE, and PHILIP IV THE FAIR for his imprisonment of POPE BONIFACE VIII and his plundering of the Knights Templars. Dante’s picture of Hugh is, as many commentators have noted, actually a conflation of Hugh Capet and his father, Hugh the Great; in this he reflects a confusion typical of his time. Dante has Hugh say that his father was a butcher in Paris—a popular (but fictional) tradition in Dante’s time applied to Hugh the Great. Dante also has Hugh say that when the Carolingian line failed, he was able to make his son king. In fact of course Hugh the Great had died before the last Carolingian king, and Hugh Capet became king himself, crowning his son king as his successor.

I Interminei (or Interminelli), Alessio (d. ca. 1296) Little is known of Alessio Interminei other than that he was from a family of influential White GUELPHs in the city of Lucca. Alessio’s name appears in several documents from the late 13th century, including one from 1295, which indicates that Alessio was still alive in that year. He was dead by 1300, the fictional date of Dante’s COMEDY, since Dante places him in the second bolgia of the eighth circle of the Inferno, the hell of the flatterers (Canto 18). Here the pilgrim Dante spots Alessio,

sunk deep in excrement, and Alessio reluctantly admits his propensity for flattery. Benvenuto da Imola, one of Dante’s early commentators, seems to be searching for something to say concerning Alessio (since little real information was available), and he simply says that Alessio had the terrible habit of flattering anyone and everyone, no matter how low or vile, and that he was so unable to say anything to anyone without flattery that he “stank of it.” Dante’s description gives that comment literal signification.

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J Jacopo del Cassero of Fano (ca. 1260– 1298) Jacopo del Cassero was a member of a noble family of Fano, a town on the Adriatic coast between Ancona and Pesaro—an area called the March of Ancona. In Dante’s time the town was subject to the Malatesta family of Rimini (the family of FRANCESCA DA RIMINI’s husband). In 1296 Jacopo was serving as podestà (chief executive administrator) of Bologna and in that capacity thwarted the political designs of the powerful nobleman Azzo VIII of Este. The ruthless Azzo took his revenge in 1298: Having been invited by Matteo Visconti to assume the position of podestà of Milan, Jacopo traveled first by sea to Venice, where he began to journey south by land. At the town of Oriaco on the river Brenta between Venice and Padua Jacopo was set upon by Azzo’s thugs. He fled into the marshes, where he was stabbed and left to bleed to death among the rushes of the lagoons. Dante places Jacopo among the late repentant souls in Ante-Purgatory. He is included among a group of shades who died violent deaths but turned to God as they were dying. He is the first of these souls to speak to Dante (PURGATORIO 5, ll. 64–84) and is followed by BUONCONTE DA MONTEFELTRO and PIA DE TOLOMEI of Siena. Unlike the other two, Jacopo is not named, but his identity is clear from the details he provides.

JOHN THE APOSTLE, was the son of the fisherman Zebedee and his wife, Salome. He and his brother John were dubbed “sons of thunder” by Jesus, who counted the two of them along with SAINT PETER as his closest companions among the apostles. In the Gospels James and John are called to discipleship from their fishing nets on the Sea of Galilee, to become what Jesus calls “fishers of men” (Matthew 4.18–22). With Peter and John James is present at the miracle of the healing of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5.37; Luke 8.51) and at the transfiguration (Mark 9.1; Matthew 17.1; Luke 9.28). These three close disciples are also present with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26.37; Mark 14.33). On the road to Jerusalem James and John join with their mother to ask Jesus for the honor of sitting at his right and left hands when he enters his kingdom (Matthew 20.21; Mark 10.37). Christ asks them whether they are able to share his sufferings, and when they answer in the affirmative, Christ prophesies that they will certainly do so (Mark 5.38–39). James did indeed suffer as Christ suffered. During the Passover feast in 44 C.E. Herod Agrippa, to please Jewish authorities alarmed at the growth of the Christian community in Jerusalem, chose James from among the Christian leaders and had him executed (Acts 12.1–2), presumably by beheading. There is, however, a later tradition that James traveled to Spain to preach the Gospel, only to return to Jerusalem, where he was martyred by Herod Agrippa. Upon his death, however, his body was

James the Apostle, Saint (d. 44 C.E.) Also called “James the Greater,” James, the brother of SAINT 471

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said to have been miraculously translated to Compostela in Spain, which by Dante’s time was one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in Christendom, thought to house James’s relics. Dante refers to Saint James several times in the COMEDY; his most important use of James is as the representative of the theological virtue of Hope during the pilgrim Dante’s final examination in the heaven of the Fixed Stars in Canto 25 of the PARADISO. When the spirit of James approaches, Beatrice calls him the one who draws pilgrims to Compostela. James tells the pilgrim to take hope to the world, now that he has seen these blessed realms with his own eyes. He asks the pilgrim what Hope is, how much he possesses himself, and what the source of his hope is. Beatrice answers for the pilgrim that he has as great a hope as any man alive, and the pilgrim defines Hope as the “sure expectancy of future bliss” (Paradiso 25, l. 67). He then cites the Scriptures as the source of his hope, naming especially the Psalms and James’s own epistle (as it was thought in Dante’s time; in fact, the epistle of James is now attributed more often to James the Lesser). Finally, James asks the pilgrim what hope’s promise is, and the pilgrim answers that he hopes for the “double raiment” of Isaiah 61.7 (l. 92), which he equates with the “white robes” of the book of Revelation 7.9 (l. 95). Jason One of the greatest heroes of classical mythology, Jason was leader of the Argonauts on their quest of the famous Golden Fleece. According to legend Jason was the rightful heir to the throne of Iolcus but as a child was cheated out of his birthright by his half brother, Pelias. When the adult Jason confronted Pelias, the latter agreed to yield the throne to Jason if he could win the Golden Fleece from its guardian, King Aeëtes of Colchis. Thus Jason, accompanied by a number of other great heroes, sailed toward Colchis in the famous ship Argo. On the way the ship stopped at Lemnos. This was an island of women who, having offended the goddess Venus, were cursed with a noxious smell that took away any desire their husbands and lovers had for them. In retaliation they killed all of the men on their island. However, Hypsipyle, daughter

of King Thoas, hid her father and lied to the other women, saying she had killed him. The trickster was soon to be tricked herself, though, for when the Argonauts landed, Jason seduced Hypsipyle, but deserted her shortly thereafter as he set sail again for Colchis, abandoning the princess with a set of twins he had fathered. When the Argonauts reached Colchis, King Aeëtes agreed to let Jason take the Golden Fleece provided he could sow the teeth of the dragon who guarded the fleece in a furrow dug by two fire-breathing oxen pulling a plow. In this apparently impossible task Jason was assisted by Medea, the king’s sorceress daughter, who had fallen in love with him. In exchange for her help Jason took Medea back to Greece as his wife. However, Jason eventually became enamored of Creusa, daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. He abandoned Medea— somewhat foolishly, considering her powers of sorcery—in order to marry Creusa. The vengeful Medea killed Creusa with a poisoned garment, then killed her own children by Jason in order to make him suffer. Ultimately Jason died of grief. Dante would have learned what he knew of Jason chiefly through stories related by OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO) and PUBLIUS PAPINUS STATIUS. He places Jason in the first bolgia of circle eight of the Inferno, the Hell of the panderers and seducers (Canto 18). Here Jason, with the other seducers, is driven along by the whips of horned devils for eternity. Yet Dante comments that Jason sheds no tears—a sign of his Stoic acceptance of his torment as well as, perhaps, his lack of remorse for his seductions. Joachim of Fiore (ca. 1132–1202) Joachim was a Cistercian monk who became famous and controversial in his own lifetime because of his mystical prophesies regarding the end of the world and the coming of Antichrist. The core of Joachim’s prophesies was his doctrine of the “everlasting Gospel,” according to which salvation history could be divided into three equal periods: the “dispensation of the Father,” which lasted from the time of Moses until the time of Christ; the “dispensation of the Son,” lasting from the time of Christ until Joachim’s own time; and the coming “dispensa-

John XXII, Pope tion of the Holy Spirit,” which was to begin in the year 1260, when Joachim predicted the Antichrist would come to earth. Joachim foretold that Antichrist would be defeated by monks like him and that this defeat would bring about a time of universal peace when there would no longer be any need for institutions or rules, and when the contemplative life could go forward unhindered. Joachim had been born in the town of Celico in Calabria. Sometime around 1160 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he was converted, and upon his return to Italy he became a Cistercian monk in the monastery at Corazzo. By 1177 he was abbot of that monastery. In 1189 he left to found his own monastery at San Giovanni in Fiore, in the mountains of Calabria. Here he created a new rule (sanctioned by Pope Celestine III in 1196) and the Ordo Florensis, an order eventually reabsorbed by the Cistercians in 1505. While at San Giovanni Joachim wrote his three major works: the Liber concordia (which attempted to harmonize the Old and New Testaments), the Psalterium decem chordarum (a mystical meditation), and the controversial Expositio in Apocalypsim, his commentary on Revelation, on which his reputation as an eschatological seer was built. Joachim died in 1202. Joachim was never considered a heretic, but his apocalyptic prophesies were condemned at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, as well as by Pope Alexander IV in 1256. One of the details that contributed to Joachim’s prophetic reputation, however, was his interpretation of the “two witnesses” in chapter 11 of Revelation as two new spiritual orders. This in the 13th century was interpreted as a prophecy of the establishment of the mendicant orders of Dominicans and Franciscans. Thus one radical faction of Franciscans, called “Spiritualists,” adopted Joachim’s view of history despite its papal condemnation and saw themselves as the group of witnesses who would have a large part to play in the defeat of Antichrist. They also conceived of SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI himself as playing a central role in the end times. SAINT BONAVENTURE, minister general of the Franciscans, was strongly opposed to this doctrine and vigorously condemned the extreme Joachimists in his order who, for example, conflated the roles of Christ and Saint Francis

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in their eschatological interpretations. Of course when the year 1260 arrived and Antichrist did not appear, Joachimism lost some of its currency. Dante places Joachim in Canto 12 of the PARADISO, among the doctors of the church in the heaven of the Sun, where the soul of Bonaventure himself introduces him and praises his prophetic gift (ll. 140–141). Certainly Dante was aware of the great irony of this situation but probably presents this reconciliation as an illustration of how all dissension is smoothed over in Paradise. John XXII, Pope (1249–1334) Jacques d’Euse (or Duèse), who became Pope John XXII, was born in 1249 in Cahors, France, probably to a family of some distinction. As a young man he studied in Naples before becoming a tutor to the family of Charles II. He held several appointed positions, including bishop of Fréjus, chancellor in Naples, archbishop of Avignon, and cardinal bishop of Oporto. After the death of POPE CLEMENT V in 1314 the papacy remained vacant for more than two years before John was elected as Clement’s successor. It is likely that John’s election was due, at least in part, to the influence of ROBERT OF ANJOU, KING NAPLES. Dante saw John as one of the popes who contaminated the papacy with his greed and corruption and considered it fitting that John was from the city of Cahors, the capital of the province Quercy. This southern French city was closely associated with usurers in the Middle Ages. Because John is still alive while Dante was completing the PARADISO, the pilgrim does not see him during the journey and does not mention him specifically by name; rather John is spoken of indirectly by both the pilgrim and SAINT PETER in Paradise. After the pilgrim has the vision of the eagle in the fifth heaven, the sphere of Mars, he says a prayer in which he asks to see God’s anger visited on the corrupt popes, including John, who wage war “withholding here and there / the bread our Father’s love denies to none” (Paradiso 18, ll. 128– 129). Dante implies that John used the power of his position to levy fines and issue pardons in order to line his own pockets at the expense of the faithful and the poor.

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John the Apostle, Saint

John is referenced again during the pilgrim’s encounter with Saint Peter in the Eighth Heaven, the sphere of the fixed stars. Here Saint Peter speaks of John as one of the “Sons of Cahors and Gascony” who “prepare / to drink our blood” (Paradiso 27, ll. 58–59). John died in 1334, leaving behind a quite wealthy estate. He was succeeded by Benedict XII. Stephanie Fritts John the Apostle, Saint (d. ca. 100 C.E.) The apostle John, also known as John the Evangelist, was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. He was the brother of the disciple SAINT JAMES THE APOSTLE and the son of the fisherman Zebedee. He and his brother were called by Jesus the “sons of thunder” (Mark 3.17). In the Gospel accounts John is part of an “inner circle” of disciples closest to Jesus. He, James, and SAINT PETER are the only witnesses to Christ’s raising of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5.37) and to the transfiguration (Matthew 17.1; Mark 9.1; Luke 9.28) and are present with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mathew 26.37; Mark 14.33). He is sent along with Peter to prepare for the Last Supper (Luke 22.8) and during the supper sits at Jesus’ side, even leaning on Jesus’ breast (John 13.23–25). John is the only disciple present at the Crucifixion, where Christ places his mother, Mary, in John’s care (John 19.25–27). In his own Gospel John refers to himself consistently as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” After the resurrection John was the first of the disciples to run to Christ’s empty tomb (John 20.2– 10). After Pentecost John was instrumental with Peter in establishing the new Christian Church in Jerusalem. Tradition says he spent much of his later life among the Christian communities of Asia Minor, settling in Ephesus with the Virgin Mary. Although some modern scholars have suggested three different authors, in Dante’s time the apostle John was universally believed to be the author of the fourth gospel, of the three letters of John in the New Testament, and of the book of Revelation, which he is believed to have written on the island of Patmos just off the coast of modern-day Turkey, having been exiled there during the reign of the emperor Domitian (81–96). According to tradi-

tion John is supposed to have returned to Ephesus, where he died during the reign of TRAJAN (MARCUS ULPIUS TRAJANUS), circa 100 C.E.—when he must have been very advanced in age. Dante makes numerous allusions to John the Evangelist in his works, especially in the COMEDY. In the procession allegorically representing the scriptures that occurs in the Earthly Paradise in PURGATORIO 29, John is represented three times, first as one of the four beasts drawing the chariot of the church (signifying his Gospel) (l. 93), next as one of the four “humble” men (l. 142) representing the minor epistles of the New Testament, and last as the old man with the “inspired” face, walking alone “in his own dream” (ll. 143–144), representing the book of Revelation. In the Mystic Rose John is pictured seated to the right of Saint Peter, who himself sits just to the right of the Virgin Mary in the top tier of the rose (PARADISO 32, ll. 124–130). John’s most important function in the Comedy, however, is in Paradiso 25–26, where he appears in the sphere of the fixed stars to examine the pilgrim Dante concerning the theological virtue of charity or Love. After Peter has examined the pilgrim on Faith and James has examined his Hope, John appears, shining brighter than the sun (25, ll. 100–111). When the pilgrim looks at the spirit of John, he expects to see him in his earthly body, on the basis of a popular medieval legend that John had been taken bodily into Heaven. The apostle disillusions the pilgrim, debunking the legend and charging him to convey the truth back to the living. Only Jesus and the Virgin ascended directly to Heaven in bodily form (25, ll. 122–129). In Canto 26 Dante is blinded by John’s brightness but answers the apostle’s questions with the assertion that God is both the beginning and the end of love—after which Beatrice restores his sight and he sees the soul of ADAM, the first man. John the Baptist, Saint (ca. 6 B.C.E.–ca. 26 C.E.) John the Baptist, or Baptiser, was a first-century Jewish prophet widely regarded by Christians as the forerunner of Jesus Christ. According to the Christian Gospels he was the son of the priest Zechariah and Elizabeth, a kinswoman of Jesus’ mother,

Judas Iscariot Mary. In Luke’s Gospel the angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah to announce that his previously barren wife will give birth to a child filled with the Holy Spirit. When the aged Zechariah expresses doubts, he is told he will be unable to speak until the birth of the child. Luke also tells the story of how Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visits Elizabeth during her pregnancy, and how Elizabeth’s child John leaps for joy in her womb when he senses the presence of the Savior. The Gospels indicate that John spent his youth in the Judaean desert. Some scholars have suggested that he was part of a radical Jewish community like the Essenes, a monastic group who lived in the desert. He emerged from the desert preaching the immanent judgment of God on the people of the Jordan Valley, calling on them to repent and be baptized as a sign of their purification. These facts are substantiated by the Jewish historian Josephus. The Gospels indicate that John baptized Jesus when he went to the Jordan, announcing his belief that Jesus was in fact the awaited Messiah. John, having achieved some notoriety with local officials through his preaching, aroused official ire when he publicly criticized the marriage of the Galilean king Herod Antipas to Herodias as illegal and immoral. John was imprisoned by Herod and ultimately executed at the request of Salome, Herodias’s daughter from a previous marriage, whose dancing had enticed Herod into rashly granting her any request. On the advice of her mother Salome asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. John the Baptist was the patron saint of FLORENCE, and his likeness appeared on the florin. The baptistry of Florence that Dante alludes to as the “lovely San Giovanni” was named for him (INFERNO 19, l. 17). Dante also alludes to John as the forerunner of Christ in Chapter 24 of the VITA NUOVA, when he describes Cavalcante’s mistress, Giovanna, walking in front of his own beloved Beatrice. In Canto 32 of the PARADISO Dante describes the honored seat of John the Baptist in the Mystic Rose, in the top tier directly opposite the Virgin Mary and flanked by Dante’s patron SAINT LUCY on his left and Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, on his right. Dante here alludes to John’s life in the desert, his martyrdom at the hands of Herod, and

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his two years spent in Limbo awaiting Christ’s Harrowing of Hell—a sojourn required of him because he had died before Christ’s Crucifixion set free the righteous faithful from Limbo. Judas Iscariot (d. ca. 27 C.E.) Judas Iscariot was one of the original 12 apostles of Jesus Christ and became infamous as the disciple who betrayed him. Judas’s name Iscariot is usually assumed to indicate that he was from the city of Kerioth in Judah (mentioned in Joshua 15.25). The Gospels describe Judas as the steward or “pursekeeper” of the followers of Christ and tend to portray him as greedy and opportunistic. This greed leads him to betray Jesus to the Sanhedrin, the governing body of the Jews headed by the high priest JOSEPH CAIAPHAS for 30 pieces of silver. The Sanhedrin has been looking for a way to seize Jesus during the festival of Passover without inciting his followers to riot. In exchange for their money Judas promises to lead them to Jesus at the Mount of Olives, where he and his disciples have retired for the night. In the Gospel stories Jesus has a premonition at the Last Supper of being betrayed by one of his closest followers and seems to know it will be Judas. That night Judas leads soldiers to Jesus where he is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and greets him with a kiss—a prearranged signal for the guards to arrest him. After his master is led away, tortured, and killed by crucifixion, the guilt-ridden Judas (according to the Gospel of Matthew 27.3–5) tries to return the money to the Sanhedrin and then hangs himself. Another account, in the book of Acts, says that Judas bought a field with the money but then fell dead in the field, his intestines having burst (Acts 1.16–20). In Dante’s COMEDY Judas appears among the chief sinners of the universe at the bottom of Hell. This area of Cocytus is named Judecca after Judas, and in it are frozen those who betrayed their lords. Frozen in the center of this pit is Lucifer himself, who betrayed God. In his three mouths he gnaws on the three principal sinners of human history—MARCUS JUNIUS BRUTUS and CASSIUS (GAIUS CASSIUS LONGINUS), who betrayed GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR, and Judas, betrayer of Christ. As the worst

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Justinian I

of them all Judas is gnawed in Lucifer’s central mouth and is stuck head first rather than feet first in those jaws (INFERNO 34, ll. 55–63). Scholars have noted how Judas’s punishment resembles that of the simoniac popes of Canto 19, stuck upside down in fiery baptismal fonts. Like them, Judas is guilty of selling Christ. Justinian I (483–565) Called “the Great,” Justinian was emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire from 527 until his death in 565. His armies overthrew the Vandal kingdom in North Africa and the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy, thereby reestablishing imperial rule in the West. More important for his legacy, however, was the codification of Roman law that he championed, a codification that formed the basis of European law thereafter. Justinian was born in Illyricum, the nephew of Emperor Justin I, under whom he was responsible for many of the administrative duties of the empire. To the chagrin of his family, Justinian married the former actress Theodora in 523 (actresses were considered little better than prostitutes at the time). In 527 he succeeded his uncle to the imperial throne. Shortly after his ascension Justinian appointed a commission of jurists headed by Tribonius to collect and codify all valid edicts issued by Roman emperors since the time of Hadrian in the early second century. By 533 the commission had produced the 50-volume Digesta (or Pandectae) plus the shorter Codex constitutionum. Within the next year was added the four-book treatise called Institutiones, and ultimately Justinian’s own new constitutions were published as Novellae constitutiones (565). Together the four works were called the Corpus iuris civilis (the body of civic law), the vehicle by which Roman law passed into medieval and modern Europe. Justinian was equally successful in his choice of a commanding general. The brilliant Belisarius was responsible for the overthrow of the Vandal armies

in North Africa (533–548) and the recovery of Italy from the Ostrogoths (535–554). This last victory enabled Justinian to establish a new western capital in RAVENNA, where he built the great cathedral of San Vitale with its magnificent mosaics depicting Theodora and himself in the apse. This and other Ravenna monuments rivaled his great building project in Constantinople—the Hagia Sophia, at the time the greatest church in Christendom. There have been some questions regarding the orthodoxy of this great builder of churches: The Monophysitic heresy, which claimed that Christ had only a single nature—his divinity—was widespread in the Eastern Empire during the sixth century, and according to some sources Justinian believed in this heresy until being converted to Orthodox Christianity by Pope Agapetus I (535–536). Dante accepts this legend when he has Justinian speak in Canto 6 of the PARADISO, following the version of Justinian’s life in BRUNETTO LATINI’s Trèsor. What is certain is that Justinian called the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 in the hope of reconciling the Monophysites to the Orthodox Church. The council was unsuccessful, and there are those who believe that Justinian himself was swayed by the Monophysites’ arguments. Modern historians do not accept this legend, though there is some evidence that Theodora might have been a Monophysite. Dante alludes to Justinian in Canto 6 of the PURGATORIO, characterizing his laws as the bridle meant to control the wild beast of the empire. In the Paradiso the radiant soul of Justinian speaks to Dante in the sphere of Mercury, among those who sought honor. Here Dante uses him to trace the history of Rome through the progress of the imperial eagle, symbol of the empire. Justinian says the standard of the eagle was carried into the west by Aeneas, asserts that Charlemagne carried the same eagle, and thus makes the connection between the empire and the church, which through divine providence grows under Imperial protection.

L Lano of Siena (d. 1287) A wealthy gentleman of Siena and reportedly one of the Maconi family, Lano (short for Arcolano) was a notorious squanderer and a member of Siena’s notorious “Spendthrift Club.” Having wasted all of his money through wild and frivolous spending, Lano is said to have joined an ill-fated expedition against the Sienese in 1287. According to GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO Lano deliberately pursued death in battle rather than spend the rest of his life in poverty. The Sienese army was ambushed at the ford of the River Toppo by Arretine troops under the command of BUONCONTE DA MONTEFELTRO. Lano chose to fight and die rather than flee. In Canto 13 of the INFERNO Lano is presented in the circle of the destroyers of their own substance in the Wood of the Suicides (ll. 109–129). He is fleeing a pack of hounds that tears apart the profligate as the sinners destroyed their own property, and he is taunted by his fellow sinner GIACOMO (JACOPO OR JACOMO) DA SANTO ANDREA, who tells him that his legs are much swifter fleeing the hounds here in Hell than they were at the Toppo on the day of his death. Lano calls for death as the hounds pursue him, but his plea is futile, since he is doomed to be hunted in this way through eternity.

a member of the Ricevuti family. He was a notary whose name appears on documents between 1298 and 1328. Lapo’s poetry resembles that of some of the other stilnovisti in its use of learned imagery drawn from unusual sources. Lapo’s love must possess a “gentle heart,” he uses Cavalcanti’s theory of “spirits” to explain love’s psychology, and he depicts his lady as one of God’s angels. In one poem love draws him toward his lady as the magi were drawn by the Christmas star. But Lapo’s poetry never strikes the pessimistic or negative tone of much of Cavalcanti’s. There is a joy in his poems that may result from the influence of the Sicilian school of poetry and its chief figure, GIACOMO DA LENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINI, “THE NOTARY”), or perhaps more directly from the Provençal poets who influenced Giacomo. At times Lapo uses feudal imagery and describes himself as his lady’s “vassal,” characteristic of the troubadour style of poetry but somewhat anachronistic in Tuscan stilnovist verse. Dante mentions Lapo a number of times, most prominently in a SONNET addressed to Cavalcanti beginning, “Guido, I’ vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io” (“Guido, I wish that you and Lapo and I”), in which he expresses a desire that he, Lapo, and Guido, along with their beloved ladies, could drift out to sea on a boat where they could discuss the nature of love. In DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA Dante praises Lapo as one of the few modern poets who had been

Lapo Gianni (ca. 1250–ca. 1328) One of the poets of the DOLCE STIL NOVO (sweet new style), and a friend of Dante and GUIDO CAVALCANTI, Lapo Gianni was probably a native of FLORENCE, 477

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successful in attaining eloquence in the vernacular tongue—the other three were CINO DA PISTOIA, Guido Cavalcanti, and Dante himself. Livy (Titus Livius) (59 B.C.E.–17 C.E.) Born in Padua into what was probably a noble family, Livy was the most respected Roman historian, and his major work, Ab urbia condita (From the founding of the city), usually translated as the History of Rome, narrates the story of the city and its civilization from its founding in 753 B.C.E. up to the death of Augustus’s stepson, Drusus, in 9 C.E. Livy’s history has not survived in its entirety. Originally it comprised 142 books. Of these 35 are now extant, including Books 1–10 and 21–45. The contents of nearly all of the other books are known through surviving epitomes (or summaries), which tell us what events the books covered, though not necessarily what Livy had to say about those events. Livy was hardly a scientific historian in a modern sense. He chose his sources according to rather subjective standards, and the accuracy of his history is sometimes questionable. But he was popular because of his vivid and poetic descriptions, his portrayal of the virtues of Rome in contrast with its Mediterranean enemies, and his memorable portraits of important historical figures. Although he learned from MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, his style is far more poetic and romantic. Readers have sometimes seen his History as expressing an affection for the Roman Republic, although he wrote during the reign of Augustus. However, his books narrating the end of the republic and the rise of Augustus have not survived, so such speculation is fruitless. In fact Augustus made Livy tutor to his greatnephew, Claudius, who would eventually become emperor himself. Dante alludes to Livy quite often as his source for Roman history, although in fact it seems that he took his actual information directly from PAULUS OROSIUS, who had incorporated Livy into his own universal history. In DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA Dante cites Livy, Pliny, Frontius, and Orosius as masters of the high style of prose (2.6.7). In DE MONARCHIA Dante cites Livy often, particularly in Book 2, in which Dante gives a history of Rome justifying its Imperial status. Dante includes the story

of the miraculous storm of hail that drove Hannibal back from attacking the city (2.4.9); the call of Cincinnatus from the plow to save the republic, and his subsequent return to his humble occupation (2.5.9); the patriotic acts of Lucius Junius Brutus sentencing his own sons to death for treason (2.5.13) or of Gaius Mucius unflinchingly plunging his own hand into the fire when he failed to assassinate the Etruscan king Porsena (2.5.14), all of which originate with Livy. It does appear, however, that Dante’s immediate source for those stories was in fact Orosius. Loderingo degli Andalò (ca. 1210–1293) Loderingo will be forever linked with his colleague, CATALANO DEI MALAVOLTI, because of Dante’s pairing of them in Canto 23 of the INFERNO. Here among the hypocrites of the sixth bolgia of circle eight they walk at a painfully slow pace, burdened by golden robes lined with lead as a sign of the false exteriors shown by the hypocrites. Loderingo never speaks in this canto, but Catalano tells Dante that the two of them are damned chiefly because of their corrupt administration during their joint appointment as podestà (the approximate equivalent of mayor) of Dante’s native city of FLORENCE. Loderingo, a GHIBELLINE of Bologna, had previously acted as podestà for several other cities in the regions of Emilia and TUSCANY (a city would often appoint the citizen of another town as podestà to prevent disputes among rival factions in the city). Along with Catalano and a few other nobles Loderingo was instrumental in founding a military and religious order in Bologna called the Knights of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The order, approved by Pope Urban IV in 1261, was dedicated to protecting the weak and defenseless and to keeping peace and order in an Italy torn by political factions of GUELPHs (supporters of the pope) and Ghibellines (supporters of the emperor in secular matters). In practice these ideals were seldom kept, and the order became known as the Frati Gaudenti (Jovial Friars) because of the laxity of their rules and their luxurious manner of living (ultimately the order was disbanded by papal decree). Loderingo and Catalano, however, seem to have been initially dedicated to the ideals of their order.

Lucan In 1265 they were jointly appointed podestà of Bologna and were able to keep the peace between the rival factions of that city. In 1266 through the influence of Pope Clement IV the two were appointed to the same post in Florence. Pope Clement’s stated goal was the preservation of peace between the Guelphs and Ghibellines of Florence. However, Clement had another surreptitious goal: Having just drawn CHARLES OF ANJOU into Italy to rule Sicily and to defeat MANFRED, son of the deceased Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA, at the Battle of Benevento just a few months earlier, Clement saw the Ghibellines of Florence (and the German army that protected them) as another threat to his power. He seems to have charged Loderingo and Catalano—who, having taken religious orders, were subject to the pope’s will—to ensure the overthrow of the Florentine Ghibellines. Thus the tenure of Loderingo and Catalano in Florence was marked by a Guelph uprising, during which the great houses of the Uberti family (including that of the noble Ghibelline heretic FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI, who appears in Canto 10 of the Inferno) in the Gardingo neighborhood near the Ponte Vecchio were all destroyed. The Ghibellines were ultimately exiled from Florence, along with their German mercenaries, and the Guelphs were established in power. Loderingo and Catalano, however, were removed from office after just a few months, during which they had done nothing to keep the peace but had ensured the success of Pope Clement’s designs for the region. In 1267 Loderingo returned with Catalano to share once more the position of podestà of Bologna. After serving his second term in this capacity, Loderingo entered the monastery of the Jovial Friars at Ronzano near Bologna. Here he lived out his days retired from the world, and he died there in 1293. Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) (39–65 C.E.) Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, known in English as Lucan, was one of the outstanding poets of the socalled silver age of classical Latin poetry. His Pharsalia, an epic poem concerning the Roman civil war between Pompey and GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR, was well known in the Middle Ages and was one of Dante’s important historical sources.

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Lucan, the nephew of the tragedian and philosopher SENECA (LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA THE YOUNGER) was born in Cordoba in what is now Spain in 39 C.E. His family moved to Rome when he was an infant, and he was educated in the capital, studying literature and rhetoric in particular. He moved to Athens to continue his education but was recalled to Rome by the emperor Nero. Lucan seems to have been close to the young emperor and at one point was named quaestor, an administrative position in the imperial government. Nero, a patron of the arts, seems to have been interested in Lucan chiefly as a poet. In 60 C.E. the 21-year-old Lucan won a prize for a poem about Nero, and he is known to have written poems entitled Journey to the Underworld, a Tale of Troy, and Medea. None of these survive. But by 61 C.E. he was at work on his great epic poem concerning the civil war, which he began publishing in 62–63 and continued to compose until his death in 65. While the poem is generally known as Pharsalia, the early manuscripts of the text are entitled Bellum Civile (“Civil War”), which seems likely to have been Lucan’s intended title. His sources were the history by LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS), now lost, and Caesar’s own accounts of the war. But the poem also contains numerous digressions on a variety of topics (astrology, geography, etc.). Lucan’s epic was highly praised during his own life, though he did not live to finish it. In about 64 C.E. Lucan seems to have lost faith in Nero as the emperor’s actions became more erratic. Nero’s affection for Lucan appears to have cooled as well: Jealous of Lucan’s poetic skill the emperor forbade him to read in public. Lucan joined in a conspiracy to overthrow Nero led by Calpurnius Piso. When the conspiracy failed and Lucan was implicated, the 25-year-old poet was forced to commit suicide by opening a vein in April 65. Some 400 manuscripts of Lucan’s Pharsalia are extant, a testimony to its popularity in late classical and medieval times. The poem ends abruptly in the middle of the 10th book. It is likely that Lucan’s intent was to write 12 books, as Virgil had in the AENEID. But it seems clear that his death cut short his poem, and the surviving manuscripts

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attest to the incomplete and unpolished state in which Lucan left the poem. As most medieval European writers did, Dante admired Lucan highly. In the CONVIVIO he calls him a grande poeta (4.28.13). In DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA Dante includes Lucan with Virgil, PUBLIUS PAPINUS STATIUS, and OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO) as what he calls the four regulate poetae (2.6.7). And Lucan’s influence can be seen throughout the COMMEDIA. Dante places Lucan in Limbo, the circle of virtuous pagans. In Canto 4 of the INFERNO Lucan and his fellow great classical poets—HOMER, Ovid, and HORACE (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS)—greet Virgil as he returns, and the five of them turn at one point to welcome Dante among them as a sixth major poet. The scene demonstrates Dante’s high opinion of Lucan—as well as, of course, his high opinion of himself. Lucrece (sixth century B.C.E.) Lucrece was a figure popular in Roman historical lore and exemplary for her virtue and chastity. As LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS) tells the story in his account of the founding of the Roman Republic, she was the wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus during the period of the royal Tarquin dynasty of ancient Rome. Sextus Tarquinius, the son of the Roman king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and cousin to Lucrece’s husband, Collatinus, was enflamed with lust for Lucrece because of her beauty but also because of her virtue. While Collatinus was away, Sextus raped Lucrece in her own bedchamber at the point of a sword. The devastated Lucrece sent word to her husband and father to come to her and to each bring a friend. Before her family and friends she revealed the violation committed by Sextus, exhorted them to avenge her honor, and stabbed herself to death in their presence. Word of Sextus’s outrage soon spread among the people of Rome, spurred on when Collatinus’s friend, Lucius Junius Brutus, displayed Lucrece’s body to the crowd. Brutus and Collatinus led a rebellion that toppled the monarchy and sent the royal family into exile, replacing the monarchy with a republican form of government under which Brutus and Collatinus were among the first consuls. All of this is said to have occurred circa 510 B.C.E.

Dante places Lucrece among the virtuous pagans in Limbo (INFERNO 4, l. 128), where she is mentioned with other respected Roman matrons— Julia (GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR’s daughter and Pompey’s wife), Marcia (wife of CATO OF UTICA), and Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi, and daughter of Scipio Africanus). Dante clearly saw her virtue as outweighing her suicide, which would have placed her in the seventh circle of Hell had she been a Christian. Later in the COMEDY JUSTINIAN I points out that the Roman monarchy began with the rape of the Sabine women and ended with the rape of Lucrece (PARADISO 6, l. 41)—a sad comment on that period of history. Lucrece’s story is familiar today through Shakespeare’s 1594 narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, as well as paintings by Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, and many others. Lucy, Saint (ca. 283–303 C.E.) Saint Lucy, or Lucia, of Syracuse was a virgin martyr killed, according to her legend, during the reign of the emperor Diocletian (284–304 C.E.). Her feast day is celebrated on December 13. She was born into a wealthy family of Roman nobility, though her father died when she was a child. She is said to have convinced her mother, Eutychia, to give all their possessions to the poor after the elder woman was miraculously healed of a hemorrhage at the tomb of Saint Agatha in Catania, some 50 miles from Syracuse. Like Agatha, Lucy was determined to consecrate her virginity to God. Thus when a potential suitor admired Lucy’s eyes, the militant virgin is said to have plucked them out rather than allow them to make her the object of men’s lust. She was subsequently rewarded for this act of radical chastity by receiving new eyes, more beautiful than before. As a result of this legend Lucy became the patron saint of eye ailments. Against her will Lucy had been betrothed to a youth of Syracuse who was incensed when she gave her goods away. The disappointed lover took the opportunity of Diocletian’s brutal Christian persecutions in 303 C.E. to denounce Lucy as a Christian to Paschasius, the Roman governor of Sicily. She was sentenced to become a prostitute, but by a miracle of God, the soldiers were unable to move her from the spot where she stood. The Romans tried to burn her and torture her with

Lucy, Saint 481 boiling oil and burning pitch, but she continued to stand unharmed, prophesying the imminent downfall of Paschasius and of Diocletian. Finally, she was martyred with a sword. Dante includes Saint Lucy in all three canticles of his COMEDY. In the INFERNO it is Saint Lucy, at the bequest of the Virgin Mary, who asks Beatrice to send aid to the benighted Dante (Inferno 2, ll. 97–108). In addressing Lucy here Mary calls Dante “Your faithful one” (l. 98): Many commentators believe that Dante suffered from weak eyesight, and so he particularly venerated Lucy as patron saint of eye ailments. Dante draws attention to Lucy’s eyes by having Beatrice remark on her “shining eyes” in line 116. In any case Lucy (whose name in Italian suggests “light”) is usually seen in the Inferno as the allegorical symbol of divine light or, more specifically, illuminating grace—the grace

that, in Catholic theology, inspires the mind to seek salvation. In the PURGATORIO Saint Lucy visits Dante while he sleeps and carries him from the Valley of the Princes to the gates of Purgatory in Canto 9 (ll. 52–63). Here, too, Lucy’s eyes become a focus of attention as she uses them to indicate to Virgil where the gate can be found (Purgatorio 9, l. 61). In the PARADISO Saint Bernard specifically points out to Dante Lucy’s place at the left hand of SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST in the celestial Rose, directly across from ADAM (who sits at the Virgin Mary’s left hand). Here in the penultimate canto of the Comedy Bernard reminds the pilgrim that it was Lucy who had first sent Beatrice to his aid when he was lost in the dark wood in the poem’s first canto, before the beginning of his long journey (Paradiso 32, ll. 137–138).

M Maccabeus, Judas (d. ca. 161 B.C.E.) Judas Maccabeus was the leader of the Jewish revolt against Antiochus IV Ephiphanes, the Seleucid ruler of Syria (the Seleucids were the Middle Eastern heirs of the Greek empire of ALEXANDER THE GREAT). He was the third son of the priest Mattathias, who had been at the center of organized resistance to Antiochus’s attempts to impose the Greek religion on the Jews. When Mattathias died in 167 B.C.E., Judas became leader of the resistance and was given the surname Maccabeus (i.e., the hammer) after a series of victories over the Syrians. Judas Maccabeus was a brilliant military leader whose rebels lived in the mountains and between 166 and 164 B.C.E. conducted what was essentially a guerrilla campaign against the powerful Syrian forces. He defeated the forces of the deputy governor Seron at Behoron (1 Maccabees 3.10–24) and subsequently overcame several other Syrian generals. He is best remembered for his purification of the Temple in Jerusalem. Here in 165 B.C.E. with the aid of the priests he restored the Temple and cleansed it of the pagan artifacts that had been introduced in Antiochus’s attempts to Hellenize the Jewish religion. The Temple was rededicated in a feast still celebrated annually as Hanukkah (1 Maccabees 4.36–59). After Antiochus died in 164 B.C.E. the Syrians offered to grant the Jews freedom of worship, but Judas Maccabeus continued his war, with the object now of winning political independence. The new Seleucid king, Demetrius I, sent an expedition

against him led by Nicanor, but Judas was able to destroy that force. In 161 B.C.E., however, a second force led by Bacchides crushed the Jews at Laisa, and Judas died in that battle, to be succeeded by his brother as leader of the rebellion. In Dante’s time Judas Maccabeus was depicted in art and literature as one of the Nine Worthies of the World—three pagan, three Jewish, and three Christian warriors. Judas formed the trio of Jewish worthies along with Joshua and KING DAVID. In his COMEDY Dante names Judas Maccabeus as one of the great warriors of God in the Heaven of Mars. Here Dante’s ancestor CACCIAGUIDA shows the pilgrim bright flashes in the luminous cross formed by the warriors’ souls, these flashes being the souls of the greatest of God’s soldiers. Judas Maccabeus is revealed just after Joshua and just before Roland and Charlemagne (PARADISO 18, ll. 40–42). Mainardo Pagano da Susinana (or Maghinardo) (d. 1302) Head of the powerful Pagani family of Romagna and lord of Faenza, Forli, and Imola, Mainardo was infamous for his political instability, supporting the GHIBELLINEs in Romagna and the GUELPHs in TUSCANY. Mainardo’s father, Piero, had placed his young son under Florentine protection, and the care they had taken for Mainardo’s welfare and for his property earned his gratitude. As a young man he also married a Florentine woman of the Tosinghi family. Thus even though his own family were staunch Ghibellines, and Mainardo generally supported the 482

Malaspina, Moroello III Ghibelline cause in his home country, he backed the Florentine Guelphs in Tuscan matters. Such divided loyalties earned Mainardo a reputation for capricious political behavior. In 1273 and 1275 he fought against the Guelph Manfredi, in the latter engagement at the side of the Ghibelline captain GUIDO DA MONTEFELTRO. In 1286, however, he joined the Manfredi in attacking Imola, Forli, and Faenza and remained on the Guelph side at the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO in 1289. In 1290, however, Mainardo turned against the Guelph Manfredi, driving them out of Faenza in order to seize control of the city for himself. Soon after he joined with a number of Guelph captains to make himself lord of Forli. In 1291 he first supported and then opposed Ildebrandino da Romena, the count of Romagna; in 1293–94 he first warred against and then fought alongside Alessandro da Romena. Funded by Florentine bankers, including the Bardi, Mainardo extended his authority to include Lamone and Santerno by 1298. In 1299 as had his former comrade in arms Guido da Montefeltro, he supported POPE BONIFACE VIII in his war against the Colonna family, and later he was with CHARLES OF VALOIS when the Frenchman took control of FLORENCE in the name of the pope. Mainardo died in Imola in 1302. Dante alludes to Mainardo twice in the COMEDY. In Canto 27 of the INFERNO the pilgrim informs Guido da Montefeltro that “the cities by Lamone and Santerno / are governed by the Lion of the White Lair” (ll. 49–50)—Mainardo’s coat of arms featured a blue lion on a white field. The pilgrim goes on to describe Mainardo as one “who changes parties every change of season” (l. 51). Later in Canto 14 of the PURGATORIO the shade of GUIDO DEL DUCA delivers a long harangue on the political corruption in Romagna and asserts, “When the Pagani’s demon finally / drops dead, they will be better off—although the record of their evil deeds remains” (ll. 118–120)—Mainardo, of course, is the “demon” to whom Guido refers. Malaspina, Corrado (Conrad) II (d. 1294) In Canto 8 of the PURGATORIO (ll. 112–139) Dante meets Corrado Malaspina, who greets the pilgrim very courteously and then asks him for news of

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his homeland, the Val di Magra—the river Magra flowed through the territory of Lunigiana, where the Malaspina family ruled from their castle of Villafranca. Corrado II, or “the younger,” had died in 1294, though little else is known about him. He was the son of Federigo I, the marchese of Villafranca, and the grandson of Corrado I, called “the elder.” The elder Corrado had been the son-in-law and ardent supporter of the Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA. Thus the family was solidly GHIBELLINE in political sympathies. GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO makes Corrado and his daughter, Spina, characters in his Decameron (2.6), where Corrado is presented as a noble, courteous, and generous lord and a Ghibelline in his politics. The Malaspina family had a reputation for justice and generosity, though probably not as widespread as Dante suggests in the pilgrim’s effusive words to Corrado: He tells Corrado that all of Europe honors the Malaspina family, for the family practices virtue by nature and by habit, making them an example of integrity in a Europe whose corruption Dante has inveighed against in the previous two cantos. To this Corrado answers that Dante himself will know firsthand something of the Malaspina family’s virtue before seven years have passed. In this Corrado alludes to the hospitality that his kinsmen would show to the exile Dante in 1306 (less than seven years after the fictional date of the COMEDY—Easter 1300). Dante would spend some time as the guest of the Malaspina family at Lunigiana: He was apparently welcomed warmly by Corrado’s cousin, Marchese Franceschino Malaspina, in whose name he was sent as ambassador to negotiate a peace with the bishop of Luni at Sarzana in 1306. He apparently also had been hosted by another of Corrado’s cousins, MOROELLO MALASPINA (lord of Giovagallo), to whom in 1307 or 1308 he addressed a letter from Casentino (his fourth epistle). Dante takes this opportunity to repay that hospitality with an elaborate compliment to Corrado’s family. Malaspina, Moroello III (d. 1315) Moroello Malaspina of Valdimagra was an important GUELPH captain and one of the many Italian lords who gave

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refuge to Dante during the years of his exile. He is best known for his military victory over the BIANCHI, the White Guelphs, at CAMPO PICENO near Pistoia in 1302. In Canto 24 of the INFERNO VANNI FUCCI likens Moroello to a fog that surrounded and defeated the enemy (ll. 145–150). Moroello was the son of Manfredi of Giovagallo and grandson of Corrado I Malaspina. He married Alagia de’Fieschi (niece of POPE ADRIAN V, whom Dante depicts in PURGATORIO 19) and fathered three children by her. He died around 1315. While most of Moroello’s family supported the Whites, he himself was loyal to the Black Guelphs. It was interesting to note that although he and his cousin, Corrado II, had differing loyalties, they both protected Dante in his exile from FLORENCE during the years 1306–07. It is the Malaspinas’ firm welcome that Dante acknowledges when he presents CORRADO MALASPINA in Canto 9 of Purgatorio. Moroello Malaspina had an extensive military career. In 1288 Moroello was captain of the Florentines in their battle against the GHIBELLINEs of AREZZO. In 1297 he was named the captain-general by the Guelphs of Bologna, later becoming Bologna’s podestà or chief magistrate. He was a captain for the Milanese in 1299 and between 1301 and 1312 he was in constant battle on behalf of the NERI, the Blacks of TUSCANY. In that capacity he completely crushed the city of Pistoia in 1306. The Emperor HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG is believed to have sent Moroello to Brescia in 1311 as the Imperial vicar. An old legend, promulgated by GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO, Benvenuto, and some other early sources, held that Dante had abandoned the first seven cantos of The Divine Comedy after his exile, but when Dante’s wife, GEMMA DONATI, was seeking reparations from the city of Florence in 1307, attempting to have her dowry returned, the missing cantos were discovered by their nephew, Andrea, while he was searching for legal papers. Andrea is supposed to have shown the cantos to DINO FRESCOBALDI. Frescobaldi so admired the work that he sent it to Moroello, with whom Dante was known to be staying at the time, asking the captain to encourage Dante to continue writing the poem. The story is probably apocryphal, as is Boccaccio’s contention that Dante

dedicated the Purgatorio to Moroello, although it is clear from what he says about the Malaspina that Dante admired and was grateful to Moroello. Amy Stahl Manfred (ca. 1232–1266) Manfred was the bastard son of the Holy Roman Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA, who legitimized him. Like his father, whom Dante places among the heretics in Canto 10 of the INFERNO, Manfred was accused of being an Epicurean. Certainly he was something of a profligate, known for enjoying food and drink and for keeping concubines. He was also on friendly terms with Saracens, some of whom he hired to be mercenaries in his army. These actions raised suspicions about his orthodoxy. But the fact that he was a GHIBELLINE and hence opposed the secular power of the papacy made him unpopular with ecclesiastical authorities who brought these charges of heresy against him. Upon the death of his father in 1250, Manfred was named regent of the Kingdom of Sicily in the absence of his half brother, Conrad IV. When Conrad died in 1254, the crown passed to Conrad’s son, Conradin, who was an infant at the time. The barons of Sicily therefore asked Manfred to act as regent once more. In 1258 when rumor reached the barons that the young Conradin had died, Manfred was elected king of Sicily and crowned in Palermo on August 10, 1258. Pope Alexander IV, however, thought of Manfred as a heretic and infidel and would not tolerate him on the Sicilian throne. Alexander excommunicated Manfred in 1258. In 1261 Alexander’s successor, Urban IV, excommunicated Manfred again and actively began to seek a replacement. He offered the Sicilian Crown to the French king Louis IX (i.e., Saint Louis), who refused. Urban then offered the crown to CHARLES OF ANJOU, Louis’s brother. When the offer was reaffirmed by Urban’s successor, Clement IV, Charles accepted and in 1265 marched into Italy at the head of a great army. On January 6, 1266, Charles was crowned in Rome, after which he marched south to claim his kingdom. Clement had proclaimed the war on Manfred a crusade, and Charles’s followers believed they were engaged in a holy war. Manfred’s army, made up of

Marco Lombardo 485 Italian, German, and Saracen forces, was badly outnumbered by the French when the armies engaged near Benevento on the plain of Grandella on February 26. When his Italian supporters fled the battle, Manfred fought on to his death. Although some of Charles’s supporters wanted to give Manfred an honorable burial, Charles reluctantly answered that because he was excommunicate, Manfred could not be buried in holy ground. Manfred’s body was accordingly placed near the bridge at Benevento, and Charles ordered that every soldier in his army pass by the spot and place a stone over the body. Thus a huge cairn was erected on the spot. Pope Clement, however, was not satisfied. He ordered the archbishop of Cosenza to disinter Manfred’s body and to move it out of the kingdom of Naples, which was a papal state, and hence out of what was technically church territory. Manfred’s body was dumped unburied to rot on the banks of the river Verde. Manfred’s enemies, including GUELPHs such as Dante’s mentor, BRUNETTO LATINI, accused him of having murdered his father, his half brother Conrad, and two of his nephews, and of attempting to murder his nephew, Conradin. Yet despite these (probably false) charges, Dante places Manfred not in Hell but in Purgatory. In Canto 3 of the PURGATORIO Dante finds Manfred among the late repentant souls waiting in Ante-Purgatory. Manfred says that he truly repented his sins on his deathbed and therefore was saved, despite the church’s excommunication of him. Still he must wait for many years before he can begin his ascent of Mount Purgatory. He requests that Dante ask his daughter, Constance, to pray for him, since such prayers will reduce his time of waiting. Constance, daughter of Manfred and Beatrice of Savoy, had married Pedro III, king of Aragon, in 1262. In 1282 Pedro was made king of Sicily after the Sicilian people overthrew Charles of Anjou. Thus by the time Dante was writing his Purgatorio, Charles had been deposed and three of Manfred’s grandsons had reined as kings: Alfonso (king of Aragon from 1285 to 1291), James (king of Sicily from 1285 to 1295), and Frederick, who was king of Sicily at the time Dante was writing.

Manto One of several soothsayers or seers whom Dante places in the fourth bolgia of circle eight in his INFERNO (20, ll. 52–93) is Manto, the daughter of the famous Theban prophet Tiresias. As are those of the other diviners, Manto’s head is twisted backward on her shoulders, and she can see only what is behind her. Although she never says a word in this canto, Virgil takes the opportunity to discuss her role in the founding of his native city of Mantua, her namesake. There are a number of anecdotes about Manto told in classical and medieval texts, and it is difficult to know with which of these Dante was familiar. Manto was reputed to be a seer who assisted her father in his practices. After her father’s death and after Thebes had been conquered by the Epigonoi (the sons of the seven kings who assaulted the city after the exile of Oedipus, seeking revenge for their fathers’ defeat), Manto was taken as a war trophy. The Epigonoi took her to Apollo’s oracle at Delphi, where the god pronounced that Manto must travel to Ionia, where she was to establish an oracle for his worship and glory. Manto crossed the sea, arriving in the city of Clarus near Ephesus in Asia Minor. Here she and her companions were attacked by a band of Cretans led by Rhacius, who was seeking to colonize the area. He took Manto as his wife, and she bore him Mopsus, who himself became a famous soothsayer. In another tradition used by Dante and common in Roman myth, including Virgil’s AENEID, Manto wandered about Italy, where, impregnated by Tiberinus (the god of the Tiber River), she gave birth to Ocnus, who Virgil says founded a city on the site of his mother’s death and named it Mantua after her. Marco Lombardo (Marco the Lombard) (late 13th century) In Canto 16 of the PURGATORIO Dante and Virgil meet a shade who identifies himself as Marco Lombardo. He walks a short distance with the poets as they make their way through the dark acrid smoke along the terrace of the wrathful. As they walk, Marco discourses on the degeneration of Christian society in general. But when Dante asks whether human beings are destined to evil, Marco denies the idea, saying that the stars may

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give one certain tendencies, but that God has given everyone a mind and a free will. The evil in the world is of human creation. In particular Marco faults the church, asserting that because the pope has attempted to assert temporal as well as spiritual power, he has abandoned the true role of the church and contributed to the degeneracy of society. Many attempts have been made to identify Marco, but Dante gives us little to go on. It seems likely he expected his readers to recognize Marco as a well-known figure of the time. When he identifies himself in the Purgatorio (14, l. 46), Marco’s words may mean that he is from Lombardy and his name is Marco, or they may mean that his name is Marco and he is of the Lombardi family. Most commentators identify him with a knight who was a member of a Venetian family named Lombardo. Whether this is the same Marco Lombardo who in circa 1292 wrote a chronicle of the city of Venice is not clear. Whoever Dante’s Marco was, he seems to have been friendly with a number of Lombard noblemen, since Dante’s character flatteringly mentions Guido da Castello of Reggio Emilia (ca. 1235–1315), Currado da Palazzo of Brescia (podestà of FLORENCE in 1277), and Gherardo da Camino of Treviso (ca. 1240–1306). Some scholars have speculated that Marco lived in lower Lombardy, in the March of Treviso, where he performed diplomatic duties for the noblemen there. He also may have been the Marco Lombardo known to have been in Paris. There is also a Marco Lombardo mentioned in a document from Bologna dated January 5, 1267. Early commentators identified Dante’s Marco with the Marco Lombardo mentioned in the Novellino, an anonymous collection of 100 varied anecdotes in Tuscan prose written in about 1281. The collection was popular, and Dante would have expected his audience to be familiar with it. A few anecdotes about Marco appear in the Novellino, where Marco is characterized as a wise and noble courtier. In one of these (number 44) Marco receives no presents at Christmastime in the city, while another rather foolish courtier receives several. When the ignorant courtier asks Marco why this happened, Marco speculates that the other must have found a lot more people of his kind than Marco found of his.

Some of Dante’s early commentators add other anecdotes about Marco. One speaks of Marco’s being taken prisoner and held for ransom, and of Marco’s applying to one Rizzardo da Camino to pay the demanded sum. But when Marco learned that Rizzardo was soliciting contributions from other noblemen throughout Lombardy, Marco told him that he would rather remain in prison than be in debt to so many, upon which Rizzardo decided to pay the entire sum himself. Another commentator claims that Marco once confronted Count UGOLINO DELLA GHERARDESCA, condemning the count for deserting the GUELPH cause and foretelling the disaster that would befall him. None of these anecdotes or scraps of information amounts to a real biography, but they do give some glimpses into the character of this figure, one whom Dante and his contemporaries apparently saw as a man of outspoken righteousness in a generally corrupt society. Medusa One of the three Gorgons of classical mythology, Medusa and her two sisters, Stheno and Euryalê, were originally pictured as monstrous women with bulging eyes, protruding tongues, tusks for teeth, and snakes for hair. Medusa was the youngest of these sisters (the children of Phorcys and Ceto, two Titans associated with the sea) and was the only Gorgon who was mortal. Dante would have been familiar with Medusa’s story from the Metamorphoses of OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO), in which Medusa was originally a beautiful young woman who was raped by the god Neptune in the temple of Minerva. Furious at the desecration of her temple, Minerva punished the victim, changing Medusa’s hair into snakes and making her face so horrifying to look upon that her gaze would turn anyone to stone (Ovid 4.794–803). The figure of Medusa plays an important role in the legend of the hero Perseus. In his quest to rescue his mother from the tyrant Polydectes Perseus was charged with taking back the head of the Gorgon. In this impossible task he is aided by the gods Mercury and Minerva, who supply him with winged sandals, a helmet (belonging to Hades) that makes him invisible, a shield with a polished mir-

Mosca de’ Lamberti rorlike surface, and a leather pouch called a kibisis in which to carry Medusa’s severed head. Perseus approaches Medusa while invisible, using his shield as a mirror to approach her without looking at her. He fights and beheads her, placing her head in the kibisis, and flies away with Mercury’s winged sandals before Medusa’s sisters, Stheno and Euryalê, can take revenge. Since Medusa’s lifeless head retains its astonishing power even while separated from her body, Perseus subsequently uses it against some of his own enemies (including the giant Atlas), turning them to stone (Ovid 5.178–180). Eventually he places the head on Minerva’s shield (called the Aegis), and the goddess is able to use it to terrify her adversaries. At the time of her death Medusa was pregnant by the god Neptune, and out of the blood from her severed head sprang two children: One was the giant Chrysaör, who reputedly was born fully armed and became the father of Geryon, the monster of fraud in Cantos 16 and 17 of the INFERNO. The other child of Medusa is the winged horse Pegasus. In Canto 9 of the Inferno the fallen angels guarding the gates of Dis call for Medusa to turn Dante to stone. Virgil, conscious of the threat to his ward, turns the pilgrim around and covers his eyes with his hands, at which point the poet addresses his readers and tells them to pay close attention to the ALLEGORY (ll. 52–63). Medusa’s ability to turn him to stone, which presumably would stop the pilgrim’s progress through the afterlife and leave him eternally marooned in Hell, allegorically suggests that Medusa may represent the sin of despair, which would paralyze the sinner in hopelessness and prevent his seeking his own redemption. Mosca de’ Lamberti (early 13th century) A prominent member of the GHIBELLINE party of FLORENCE, Mosca de’ Lamberti was instrumental in inciting the violent GUELPH-Ghibelline feud that plagued Florentine politics for generations. The incident, as related by Giovanni Villani in his 14th-century history of Florence, began early in 1215, when a scandal erupted in Florence after the Guelph Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti broke off his engagement with Reperata, daughter of the Ghi-

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belline Lambertuccio degli Amidei. Buondelmonte had been approached by Aldruda Donati, who offered him her beautiful daughter instead, promising as well to pay the financial penalty he would incur for breaking off his engagement. The engagement was broken, and Buondelmonte married into the Guelph Donati family (from whom Dante’s own wife, GEMMA DONATI, also descended). This infuriated the Amidei family and their allies (who included the very powerful Uberti family, from which was descended FARINATA DELGI UBERTI, the great Ghibelline captain who appears in INFERNO, Canto 10). They immediately called for revenge on Buondelmonte for the insult. As the Amidei allies discussed the precise means by which they would exact their revenge, some said they should beat him, and some said they should draw blood. In the midst of the debate Mosca de’ Lamberti stood up and declared, “What’s done is over with.” By this he was understood to mean that whatever revenge was taken on Buondelmonte would provoke the same violent reaction from his Guelph allies; therefore there was no reason to spare Buondelmonte the harshest of vendettas—murder. On Easter morning 1215, as Villani tells it, Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti traveled from Oltrarno toward the Ponte Vecchio, dressed in white and riding a white horse. At the end of the bridge at the foot of the pillar that supported the statue of Mars Buondelmonte was attacked by a group of Amidei partisans. He was thrown from his horse by Schiatta degli Uberti and was assailed and stabbed by Lambertuccio degli Amidei and by Mosca Lamberti himself. But according to Villani, it was Odarrigo Fifanti who struck the fatal blow that ended Buondelmonte’s life. After the Buondelmonte assassination all the noble families of Florence took sides in the dispute, and what had been a political rivalry between families loyal to the pope and those loyal to the emperor turned into a violent feud. In Canto 6 of the Inferno the pilgrim Dante asks CIACCO the glutton about certain prominent Florentine citizens, one of whom is Mosca Lamberti, whom he describes as one “bent on doing good” (l. 81). Ciacco answers that Mosca is far deeper in Hell. Dante places Mosca in bolgia nine of the

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eighth circle of the Inferno—the Hell of the sowers of discord. Here when Mosca identifies himself as the one who made the statement “What’s done is over with” (Canto 28, l. 107), Dante spurns him, first reminding him that his own family suffered as a consequence of his actions—in fact, Lamberti family was ultimately exiled from Florence. The last we see of Mosca in the Inferno is when he retreats, mad with pain, from Dante’s reprimand. Muhammad (ca. 570–632) The founder of the Muslim religion and the proclaimed prophet of Allah, Muhammad was viewed by medieval Christians like Dante as a schismatic responsible for the rift in faith between Christianity and Islam. Dante places him in the ninth bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell, among the sowers of discord. The historical Muhammad was born in Mecca about 570. At that time Mecca was a powerful commercial center and was home to an important stone temple, the Ka’bah, which housed idols of the many gods worshipped in Arabia at that time. Pilgrims traveled to Mecca to visit the temple, and during the season of pilgrimage, all intertribal warfare was forbidden. Orphaned at an early age, Muhammad was raised by his uncle, Abu Talib, a merchant and caravan trader who was also head of the Hashim clan, part of the Quraysh, the most influential tribe in Mecca. The young Muhammad accompanied his uncle on numerous trading trips to Syria, which was then a Christian country. As a young man Muhammad himself worked as a caravan trader, making several journeys in the service of a wealthy Meccan woman named Khadija. Impressed by Muhammad’s honesty and ability, Khadija married the much younger Muhammad in about 595. They are known to have had four daughters, but no sons who survived past infancy. Not much is known of Muhammad’s life between his marriage at the age of 25 and his prophetic call at the age of 40. Clearly his spiritual life was deepening, perhaps as a result of profound meditation— perhaps also of the influence of Khadija’s cousin, Waraqa Ibn Nawfal, who was familiar with Christianity and Judaism and may have first acquainted the Prophet with monotheistic ideas. Certainly

Muhammad was familiar with the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, and among other things, emphasized the tradition that the Arabs were descendants of Abraham through his older son, Ishmael. Whatever the impetus, it was during meditation in the year 610 C.E. that Muslims believe the angel Gabriel first appeared to Muhammad and called him to be a prophet. Over the next 23 years the angel revealed to Muhammad the sacred text of the Qu’ran, which Muslims consider the word of God spoken directly in the Arabic language of his last true Prophet. Muhammad, who may have been illiterate, never wrote down the revelations during his lifetime but they were recorded by secretaries from his recitations and assembled in their present form after the Prophet’s death. The first revelation of 610, however, seems to have confused Muhammad, and he revealed it at first only to his wife. Three years passed before he had fully digested these early revelations and decided actively to seek converts. After quietly converting a handful of close associates, Muhammad began his truly public ministry. His early preaching in Mecca emphasized the importance of belief in only one God, and the necessity of obtaining forgiveness for sins through prayer and through charity to others, especially to the poor. He emphasized, as well, certain moral principles, condemning slavery and condemning the practice of infanticide of newborn girls. He began to encounter serious opposition in Mecca when he attacked polytheism (claiming that the Ka’bah belonged only to Allah) and when he called for economic reform to help the needy. As opposition to Muhammad and his followers increased in Mecca, Muhammad was successful in converting a group of citizens from the nearby city of Medina. These men returned to their home and ultimately converted the entire city in 621. This proved a particularly fortuitous event for Muhammad. Against mounting opposition in Mecca and after the death of his wife, Muhammad fled the city with 70 followers in 622, reaching sanctuary in Medina. This flight, known as the hijra, is the event from which Muslims date the calendar. In Medina Muhammad established his own community, reforming the society according to the pre-

Myrrha cepts of his new religion. In 624 he led a small army from Medina against the polytheists of Mecca at the Battle of Badr, where, though badly outnumbered, Muhammad’s army won the field and killed the Meccan general, Abu-Jahl. Many Arabs saw the victory as a sign of divine favor regarding the new religion, and the number of Muhammad’s followers continued to increase. In 628 the Meccans agreed to a treaty allowing Muhammad and his followers free access to the traditional Arab pilgrimage site, the Ka’bah. But when Mecca reneged on the treaty, Muhammad decided that the time had come to take the great city itself. In 630 Mecca fell to Muhammad’s army with very little resistance, and, now in control of the city and the Ka’bah, he destroyed all of the old idols. From that moment Muhammad was the most powerful person in the country. Converts flocked to Islam, and before Muhammad’s death in 632, all of Arabia had been converted. That of course was only the beginning, and in the next 100 years Islam expanded throughout the Middle East and northern Africa, as far west as Spain and as far east as India. It should be noted that one of Muhammad’s early successors, his son-in-law, Ali, is also one of the schismatics punished in Canto 28 of Dante’s INFERNO. Ali, one of Muhammad’s first converts and the husband of the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima, became caliph (i.e., successor of Muhammad) in 656 but was assassinated in 661, and the argument over his successor caused a rift within Islam between Sunni and Shiite that has lasted to this day. The placing of Muhammad in Hell may be controversial today—when the COMEDY is translated into Arabic, this section is routinely excised. But anything else would have been unthinkable in Dante’s time. Medieval Christians believed that Muhammad was a renegade Christian cardinal who, disappointed in his desire to become pope, had chosen to split from the church and found his own faith. Thus Dante would have seen Muhammad as a schismatic who broke from the one true church. Further it was Muhammad’s followers who had conquered the Holy Land, thus splitting off a country that should have been in Christian hands. Muhammad’s punishment (being split open from his crotch to his chin), paired with Ali’s complementary pun-

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ishment (being split from his chin to the top of his head), symbolize Dante’s belief that between them, the two Muslim leaders are responsible for all religious division in the world as Dante knew it. Myrrha Myrrha was a young woman in classical mythology who, seized with a violent incestuous passion for her own father, disguised herself in order to lie with him. For this act Dante places her in the 10th bolgia of circle eight of the Inferno—the Hell of the falsifiers. Specifically she is one of the self-falsifiers, the falsifiers of identity. Like others guilty of such deception, Myrrha runs madly through the ditch, having lost her mind—the one thing that would give her the identity she denied on earth (Canto 30, ll. 37–41). Myrrha’s story, as told in Dante’s main source, the Metamorphoses of OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO) (X, 298–502), is a tragic one. In love with her father, King Cinyas of Cyprus, the young and beautiful Myrrha eschews all other suitors. Convinced that she can never act on her forbidden lust, she determines to commit suicide by hanging herself. But her nurse enters her room and stops her just in time. Reluctant to reveal the cause of her sorrow, Myrrha is finally convinced to tell the nurse everything. The nurse in turn, though horrified, decides that satisfying the girl’s taboo desire would be preferable to Myrrha’s suicide, and she agrees to help her to her father’s bed. During the festival of the goddess Ceres when Myrrha’s mother, Cenchreis, is away from home with the other married women and is required to abstain from her husband’s bed for nine days, the nurse helps Myrrha disguise herself and presents her to her father as a young concubine for him to enjoy while his wife is away. The drunken Cinyas sleeps with his disguised daughter, failing to recognize her in the dark. The two repeat the act for several more days until Cinyas, overcome with curiosity, takes a lamp to the bed and, to his horror, finds his daughter there. The furious Cinyas draws his sword, swearing to kill Myrrha. But Myrrha flees and with the assistance of the goddess Venus is able to escape Cyprus and her father’s anger. She wanders for nine months, finally reaching the land of the Sabaeans.

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Here worn out and heavy with pregnancy, she prays to the gods to take pity on her. If she continues to live, she will offend the living; if she is granted death, she will offend the dead. She prays to be denied both life and death, and the merciful gods respond by changing her into a myrrh tree.

Soon after the child Adonis is born from the trunk of this tree. He is raised by Naiads, who wash him in the drops of myrrh that drip from his mother’s tree, which are Myrrha’s tears. The boy grows into the most handsome young man on earth and becomes the lover of the goddess Venus herself.

N Neri The Neri, or “Blacks,” were one of the two bitter factions into which the GUELPH party of FLORENCE divided in 1300. The Neri differed from their rivals, the BIANCHI (or “Whites”), in their extreme devotion to the traditional Guelph support of the papacy in Italian politics, as opposed to the interests of the Empire. The Black Guelphs were generally members of the upper middle class and often had banking interests. They tended to support Florence’s own territorial ambitions as well. The White Guelphs, chiefly made up of members of the merchant class, supported peace above all and were distrustful of the ambitions of POPE BONIFACE VIII, a distrust that ultimately allied them with the GHIBELLINEs, the traditional supporters of Imperial interests. It may seem strange to us today, though it is typical of Italian politics of the time, that the BianchiNeri feud originated as a local domestic squabble that had nothing to do with politics. The parties have their origin in Pistoia, where two branches of the Cancellieri family let their personal differences escalate into a feud that engulfed the entire town. When Florence intervened to stop the violence in Pistoia, two rival families, the Cerchi and the Donati, took sides in the dispute and began their own fierce feud, ultimately embroiling the entire city in what developed into passionate political differences. Those differences erupted into full-scale rioting in the city of Florence in May 1300, forcing the priors of the city—Dante included—to take

action and exile the leaders of both parties, including Dante’s wife’s kinsman CORSO DONATI, leader of the Blacks, and Dante’s best friend, the poet GUIDO CAVALCANTI, one of the leaders of the Whites (who died a few months later of malaria contracted during his exile). But when the White leaders were allowed to return to the city while the Blacks remained in exile, Pope Boniface took steps to intervene, calling CHARLES OF VALOIS from France to pacify Florence. Dante was sent with a three-man delegation to negotiate with the pope, but before any negotiation could occur, Charles entered Florence with an army and restored the Blacks to power. The new Black Guelph government sentenced Dante to permanent exile, along with some 600 of his fellow Whites. Dante alludes to the Bianchi-Neri feud in all three canticles of the COMEDY. He has CIACCO “the hog” predict the feud in Canto 6 of the INFERNO, while the blasphemous thief VANNI FUCCI clearly prophesies the exile of the Whites in order to make the pilgrim suffer in Canto 24, ll. 143–150. In the PURGATORIO HUGH CAPET condemns his descendent Charles of Valois for his coming invasion of Florence (Canto 20, ll. 74–75). In the PARADISO Dante’s ancestor CACCIAGUIDA prophesies Dante’s exile and calls the other White Guelphs exiled with him a “despicable, senseless company” (Canto 17, l. 62), suggesting that by the time he was writing the Paradiso in the late 1310s Dante had rejected the partisan politics of his city. 491

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Niccolò de’ Salimbeni

Niccolò de’ Salimbeni (late 13th century) Probably the son of Giovanni de’ Salimbeni, a wealthy citizen of Siena, Niccolò de’ Salimbeni was a member of that city’s notorious Brigata Spendereccia (Spendthrifts’ Brigade). This was a club of some 20 young citizens of Siena determined to perform acts that would make themselves the talk of the town. So they all contributed a significant amount of money to a general fund, from which they were required to spend extravagantly, the only rules being that the spending be lavish and wasteful. So they would give exotic banquets, for instance, with outrageously expensive cuisine and would eat with gold and silver utensils, which they would toss out the window of their rented palace at the end of the meal. Niccolò was one of the chief members of this society and was remembered for introducing cloves into Sienese cuisine. In the late 13th century cloves were an exorbitantly expensive spice, but Niccolò is said to have provided a banquet of pheasants roasted on a bed of flaming cloves. The members of the Spendthrifts’ Brigade ran through their personal fortunes in less than two years. They did indeed become the talk of Siena, but as laughingstocks. Many were forced to live on charity. Niccolò seems to have lived for some time after these events, and some scholars have identified him as present in 1311 at the royal court of the emperor HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG in Milan, where he was appointed Imperial vicar. Others, however, have suggested that the vicar was a different Niccolò, one Niccolò de’ Bonsignori, a contemporary of the Sienese Niccolò. With four other members of the Spendthrifts’ Brigade Niccolò is mentioned in Canto 29 of the INFERNO by the alchemist CAPOCCHIO, who uses him and his fellow spendthrifts as examples of the general foolishness of the Sienese. Nicholas III, Pope (ca. 1216–1280) Giovanni Gaetano Orsini was born in Rome to a noble family. Nothing is known of his early life or education, but his father is known to have been a valued adviser to Pope Innocent IV, who in gratitude appointed the young Giovanni (still probably less than 30 years

old) cardinal deacon of San Nicola in Carcere Tulliano in 1244. He became a respected diplomat and was chosen in 1252 to negotiate a peace between the feuding GUELPHs and GHIBELLINEs of FLORENCE. Although that mission was unsuccessful, he was also chosen to ratify a peace treaty between France and England in 1258. He was appointed inquisitor general in 1262 and protector of the Franciscans in 1263. In 1265 he was one of four cardinals chosen to invest CHARLES OF ANJOU with the kingdom of Naples. He was close adviser to a succession of popes for more than 30 years, becoming archpriest of Saint Peter’s under John XXI, whom he ultimately succeeded to the papacy in 1277 (after a sixmonth vacancy), taking the name of Nicholas III. Nicholas was an active and unabashedly political pope. Determined to rid Rome and central Italy of foreign influence, particularly of Imperial interests, he persuaded RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG to cede control of Romagna and of RAVENNA to the Holy See in 1278. He also issued a new constitution in 1278 requiring that all civic offices in the city be held by native Romans, thus frustrating the ambitions of Charles of Anjou to control central Italy. Nicholas also issued the bull Exiit qui seminat in 1279, which settled the division in the Franciscan order between those who wanted strict observance of the rule of poverty and those who wanted that rule relaxed, deciding in favor of the former. Another lasting contribution that Nicholas made was in rebuilding the Vatican, where he was the first pope in a century to reside. He remodeled and enlarged the Lateran Palace, at great cost, and built a large personal residence near Viterbo as well. From one point of view Nicholas’s accomplishments as pope could be seen as strengthening the papacy; from another they might be viewed as furthering the worldliness of the church. Dante, who saw the secular power of the church as one of the great evils of his time, could not have approved of Nicholas’s endeavors. The negative view of Nicholas is underlined by his infamous nepotism. Many of his efforts as pope seem to have been aimed at using his power to advance the influence and aspirations of his family. In 1278 he made his nephew, Frate Latino

Nimrod of Rome, the cardinal of Ostia, and after he had secured Romagna from Rudolph I, he appointed another nephew, Bertoldo degli Orsini, count of Romagna in the name of the church. Bertoldo occupied Romagna, and Latino was sent with him as papal legate. Nicholas is also known to have given the Castel Sant’Angelo, a possession of the church, to another of his nephews, a Messer Orso. And he seems to have enriched other relatives as well, whenever the opportunity arose. It is said that of the seven cardinals he appointed, most were members of his own family. Nicholas died in his palace near Viterbo on August 22, 1280, his brief papacy filled with political triumphs and ethical controversy. Dante places Pope Nicholas in the third bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell (INFERNO, Canto 19), the circle of the simoniacs. These are sinners who are guilty of profiting from the selling of church offices or sacraments. Dante has Nicholas identify himself as the son of a she-bear (the literal meaning of the family name Orsini) who, in his eagerness to advance his own “cubs,” pocketed a great deal of the church’s wealth in his lifetime (ll. 70–72). Nimrod According to the book of Genesis Nimrod was the son of Cush and was famous as a “mighty hunter before the Lord” (Genesis 10.9, NRSV). Nimrod is also a builder of cities and the first king of Babylon. In the INFERNO Dante makes Nimrod one of the giants guarding the ninth circle of Hell (Canto 31, ll. 67–81). Canto 31 opens when Dante hears the loud blast of a horn, which ultimately he traces to a horn around the neck of the giant Nimrod, who still has it from his days as a mighty hunter. When the poets approach him, Nimrod babbles some nonsense, and Virgil tells Dante that it is useless to try to communicate with him. Punished for his attempt to build the Tower of Babel, Nimrod can neither speak intelligibly nor understand the language of anyone who speaks to him. For a modern reader there are two problems with Dante’s presentation. First, there is no biblical justification for the depiction of Nimrod as a giant. However, a long medieval tradition portrayed him

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as such, including no less an authority than SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (City of God 16.4). Dante himself had previously mentioned Nimrod as a giant in his DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA (1.7.4). Second, nothing in the Bible identifies Nimrod as the builder of the Tower of Babel; nor are the two stories of Nimrod and the tower related. However, since the tower is built on the plain of Shinar (Genesis 11.2), the location of Babylon, early Christian and medieval scholars beginning with Josephus and Saint Augustine identified Nimrod as the tower’s founder. And Dante would certainly have known of BRUNETTO LATINI’s attribution of the tower to Nimrod in his Tresor (1.24). The Scriptures said that all human beings spoke a common language (Hebrew, according to medieval tradition) before the building of the tower, but the construction angered God, since the intent was to build the tower all the way to Heaven. To

The Giants—Nimrod, from Canto 31 of the Inferno, by William Blake. From Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante, by William Blake, London: National ArtCollections Fund, 1922.

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frustrate the builders, God confused the workers’ languages and sabotaged the construction. Thus Dante’s Nimrod speaks unintelligibly, and thus he belongs with the other giants of this canto—those

who fought against Heaven, including Ephialtes, who with his brother, Otus, piled Mount Pelion atop Mount Ossa in an attempt to attack the gods in Heaven.

O Oderisi of Gubbio (ca. 1240–1299) Oderisi was a famous miniaturist (an illuminator of manuscripts) born in about 1240 in the small city of Gubbio in the Apennines near Perugia. Not a great deal is known about his life, but he is reputed to have been a friend of the acclaimed painter GIOTTO DI BONDONE. Oderisi is known to have been active in Bologna in the later 1260s and early 1270s and at that time received a commission from the wealthy Lambertazzi family to illustrate 80 leaves of a manuscript for them. Dante seems to have been acquainted with Oderisi—he has the spirit of Oderisi call him “brother” in PURGATORIO 11, l. 82—and had possibly met him in Bologna. While in that city Oderisi seems to have taken on as a student Franco Bolognese, whose skill as a miniaturist eventually rivaled his own. POPE BONIFACE VIII commissioned both Oderisi and Franco Bolognese to illuminate a number of manuscripts in the Vatican library. In 1295 Oderisi seems to have gone to Rome to work, and he apparently died there in 1299. In any case he was certainly dead by 1300, the fictional date of Dante’s COMEDY, since Dante places Oderisi in the first terrace of Purgatory, the round of the proud (Canto 11, ll. 73–117). Here Dante uses the figure of Oderisi as an example of pride in artistic accomplishment—it is reported that Oderisi was particularly vain about his art and claimed that no painter could surpass him. In the Purgatorio, weighted down by a great stone, Oderisi

recognizes Dante, and, commenting on how Franco of Bologna’s skills have surpassed his own, Oderisi discourses on the transience of fame and the futility of the desire to leave a lasting reputation. Opizzo d’Este (1247–1293) Opizzo d’Este, or Opizzo II, was marquis of Ferrara and later lord of Modena and Reggio as well. He was the natural son of Rinaldo da Roman and, according to one source, was born while his father was being held hostage in Apulia by the Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA. Rinaldo died before his own father, Azzo VII of Este; thus when Azzo died in 1264, his grandson, Opizzo, was made marquis. A staunch GUELPH, Opizzo married Giacomina Fieschi, the niece of POPE ADRIAN V, the year before ascending to the lordship of Ferrara. The Guelph Opizzo was a firm supporter of CHARLES OF ANJOU’s campaign to wrest control of southern Italy away from Frederick’s son, MANFRED. He also seems to have had a reputation for cruelty and ruthlessness, so much so that Dante places him among the tyrants who stand up to their eyebrows in the boiling river of blood in circle seven of Hell. The centaur Nessus calls him “the blond” (l. 110) and claims that he was murdered by his own stepson. Opizzo died on February 20, 1293, and according to rumor had been suffocated by his son and successor, Azzo VIII. Dante accepts this story as true and calls Azzo Opizzo’s “stepson” either to draw attention to the unnaturalness 495

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Orosius, Paulus

of patricide or to suggest the infidelity of Opizzo’s wife, Giacomina. Orosius, Paulus (fifth century C.E.) Paulus Orosius was a Spanish priest of the early fifth century who plays an important role the COMEDY. His appearance in history is brief, though his contribution is great. Around the year 414, he traveled to Hippo in Africa, where he became a disciple of SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO. In 415 Augustine sent him to Jerusalem, where he debated the heretic Pelagius before a council of Palestine bishops. During these years the Christian community was under attack by pagans who claimed that the empire had fallen on bad times since the adoption of Christianity. At Augustine’s suggestion in 416 Orosius began writing a history of the world that would supplement Augustine’s own De civitate Dei (City of God) around 416 or 417. The goal of this project was to use historical facts to disprove the pagans’ theory, so it was titled Historiarum adversus Paganos libri VII (“History against the Pagans in Seven Books”), though medieval readers often referred to it as the Ormista (an anagram of Orossi Mundi historia, or “Osorius’s world history”). The project took about two years to complete, and Orosius disappears from all historical records after that point. The Historiarum was the first Christian attempt at a universal history, however, and many later historians have used it as a source. Although modern historians disregard the work’s historical value, its popularity is attested by more than 200 extant medieval manuscripts. Dante mentions Orosius no fewer than seven times in his works (in the CONVIVIO, the MONARCHIA, and DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA, where in 2.6.7 he is held up as a model of prose style). Many historical details in the Comedy seem to be drawn from Orosius’s work—including the depiction of ALEXANDER THE GREAT in INFERNO 12 and the story of Semiramis in Inferno 5. Dante does not mention Orosius’s name specifically in the Comedy, but he clearly alludes to him. In the PARADISO Dante calls him “the great defender of the Christian Age” (10, l. 119), a reference to the fact that his history sought to prove that the world had not

become worse in the Christian era. Dante respectfully places the historian in the heaven of the Sun with the other doctors of the church. Jessica Felkins Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (43 B.C.E.–ca. 18 C.E.) Publius Ovidius Naso, known to posterity as Ovid, was one of the most influential of classical Roman poets. Through his love poetry and his popular compilation of mythology, the Metamorphoses, Ovid has influenced writers such as Chaucer, Cervantes, Goethe, Racine, and T. S. Eliot and inspired artists such as Titian and composers such as Bach as well. For Dante Ovid was second only to Virgil as a classical influence. Ovid was born in the village of Sumo near Rome, the year after GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR’s assassination. He was a member of a noble family and was well educated in rhetoric in anticipation of a life in public service. As a young man he held minor governmental posts, including an appointment to the “Court of the Hundred,” which supervised civil and criminal cases. But he was drawn to poetry from an early age, giving public readings of his verse at the age of 17 or 18. At the age of 24 Ovid retired from public service in order to live off his small family fortune and devote his life to poetry. The subject of Ovid’s early poetry was his own sophisticated life as an aristocratic urban Roman during the peaceful and prosperous reign of Caesar Augustus. His first publication, the Amores (“Love Affairs”), a collection of amorous poems in the tradition of Catullus, was published in 13 B.C.E. The poems chronicle the exploits and cavalier attitudes of the author as a young playboy. He followed these poems with his Ars amatoria (“The Art of Love”), essentially an instruction manual on how to seduce lovers, and its subsequent companion volume, Remedia amores (“The Remedy of Love”), instructing lovers how to extricate themselves from their affairs. During this time Ovid was also going through two disastrous marriages himself, until he finally found the right match on his third try. A highly original work produced about this time was Ovid’s Heroides (“Heroines”), a collection of 15 verse epistles written from the point of view of

Ovid different literary, mythological, or legendary heroines to their former lovers (one, for example, is from DIDO to Aeneas). In addition to their value as a classical male writer’s attempt to explore the ancient myths from a female perspective, these letters were highly influential in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In the year 8 C.E. Ovid was abruptly uprooted from his comfortable life in Rome. For reasons not completely clear, the poet was banished from the capital and exiled to the remote city of Tomi, on the edge of the empire on the shores of the Black Sea. Some say that Ovid may have had some part in a scandal involving the adultery of Julia, daughter of Augustus. Others think that the chief reason behind Ovid’s exile was his love poetry, celebrating as it does a kind of libertine sensibility directly opposed to the strict moral code that the emperor was trying to impose on the city. Ovid spent the last 10 years of his life in Tomi, writing numerous verse letters back to Rome in the hope of receiving an imperial pardon, which never occurred. These were published in two separate collections, Tristia (“Sorrows”) and the Epistulae ex Ponto (“Letters from Pontus”). Ovid’s greatest work, his Metamorphoses, which was unfinished at the time of his exile, is a collection of 250 brief narratives in 15 books, all having to do

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with a variety of mythic transformations. Written in the dactylic hexameter line of Virgil and HOMER, the poem is in some ways Ovid’s answer to Virgil’s epic. But Ovid has no single hero and tells an interwoven, fluid series of tales modeled on the Alexandrine Greek form called the epyllion (miniature epic), and told from a variety of shifting points of view. In many ways Dante’s COMEDY is closer in form to Ovid’s poem than Virgil’s, since it presents numerous souls, some (particularly in the INFERNO) transformed into strange or monstrous shapes, and many of whom tell their own stories in detailed and memorable ways. The Metamorphoses was Dante’s chief source for his knowledge of Greco-Roman mythology—as it was for most writers of the medieval period. Some 75 passages in the Commedia have been identified as borrowing from or alluding to Ovid’s text—the most striking passage in Canto 25 of the Inferno, where Dante imitates Ovid’s style in his description of the transformation of the thieves. These allusions place Ovid second only to Virgil in his direct influence on Dante’s great poem. The Roman poet appears himself in Canto 4 of the Inferno, where in Limbo—the hell of the virtuous pagans—he joins Virgil, Homer, HORACE (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS), and LUCAN (MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS) to welcome Dante into the group of great poets (Inferno 4, ll. 85–99).

P Peire d’Alvernhe (Petrus de Alvèrnia, or Peter of Auvergne) (fl. 1150–1180) Peire d’Alvernhe was a well-known troubadour poet of the later 12th century, and in Dante’s time he was regarded as the most accomplished troubadour preceding the highly regarded GIRAUT DE BORNELH. His melodies were particularly admired. He was a contemporary of Bernart de Ventadorn, and one of Peire’s 20 surviving lyrics is a debate poem or tenso written with Bernart. In his part of the poem Peire characterizes himself as a poet gifted with wisdom, joy, and eloquence, attained through love. A stylistic disciple of the earlier troubadour Marcabru, Peire wrote in a complex style known as trobar clus (or closed style). Only the most gifted poets should write in such a style, Peire believed, and took an elitist view toward his audience as well, since his poetry could be appreciated only by a select group. His bestknown poem is a satire of other troubadour poets, in which he ridicules his contemporaries, such as Bernart and Giraut, as well as Raimbaut d’Orange. In the end he pokes fun at himself and his own obscure poems, which he says hardly anyone can understand. An extant vida or biography claims that Peire was born in Clermont, a town in Auvergne in central France. He is purported to have been born in the middle class and to have been quite handsome, though such vidas are notoriously untrustworthy. He does seem to have become attached to a number of courts in Spain and southern France, including that of Ermengarde of Narbonne and, at one

point, of Ramon V of Toulouse. One contemporary poet, Bernart Marti, asserted that Peire had been a canon of the church but forsook his vows to follow the life of a troubadour. Again there is no way to verify the truth of this. It is true that some of Peire’s extant lyrics are religious, among the first such poems in the Provençal language, but these seem to be later poems, where he implies he is abandoning love poetry in favor of the love of God. He is believed to have died in a monastery, perhaps as late at 1215. Dante seems to have particularly admired Peire for the sophistication of his poetic skill. He praises him in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA (1.10.3) as one of the first important poets in the langue d’oc. Peter, Saint (d. ca. 67 C.E.) Originally named Simon, Saint Peter was foremost among the apostles of Jesus and was renamed Peter (or rock) by Jesus himself, who in the Gospels says he will build his church on this rock (Matthew 16.18). Originally a fisherman in Capernaum, he is called with his brother, Andrew, to become one of the disciples. Peter’s zeal and faith soon make him prominent among the apostles, and along with SAINT JOHN THE APOSTLE and SAINT JAMES THE APOSTLE he becomes one of Jesus’s “inner circle,” witnessing his transfiguration (Matthew 17.1; Mark 9.1; Luke 9.28) and accompanying him in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26.37; Mark 14.33). Peter alone is called by Jesus to walk on water (Matthew 14.28), and he alone first recognizes Jesus as 498

Peter Damian, Saint the Christ (i.e., God’s annointed one) (Matthew 16.13–20; Mark 8.27–30); Luke 9.18–21). After Jesus’s arrest, however, all four Gospels relate that Peter denied knowing Jesus three times in fear of the authorities (Matthew 26.58–75; Mark 14.54– 72; Luke 22.54–62; John 18.15–27). After the resurrection however Peter’s faith seems not to have wavered. He is told by the resurrected Christ to “feed my sheep” (John 21.15–17). He is the recognized leader of the fledgling church in Jerusalem and preaches the first recorded Christian sermon, on the life and meaning of Christ, and thereby converts a number of Jews in Acts 3.1–4.4. Tradition associates Peter with the institution of the Christian Church in Rome, and the medieval church held him to be the first bishop of that city. He is said to have been martyred there—by being crucified head downward—during the reign of Nero. All subsequent bishops of Rome were considered descendants of Saint Peter. Because of Christ’s words to him that he would build his church on this rock, and because Christ is depicted in the Gospels as giving Peter the “office of the keys,” telling him that what he binds or loosens on earth will be bound or loosened in Heaven (Matthew 16.19), Peter’s descendants were regarded as inheritors of the apostolic blessing and the “office of the keys.” Thus the bishop of Rome came to be considered the head of the church, the pope. Saint Peter is referred to numerous times in the COMEDY as well as Dante’s other works. Of particular interest is the passage in Canto 32 of the PURGATORIO, in which the third catastrophe of the church is described, the accumulation of wealth and power as a result of the Donation of CONSTANTINE, the emperor’s supposed bequest of the Western Empire to the pope. During Dante’s vision of this disaster the voice of Saint Peter is heard from Heaven to say, “My little ship, / O what ill-fated cargo you must bear!” (ll. 128–129). Peter also appears in the Mystic Rose in the Empyrean Heaven, seated on the right hand of the Virgin Mary (PARADISO 32, ll. 124–126). But the most important appearance of Peter in the Comedy is in the heaven of the Fixed Stars (Paradiso 24), where his purpose is to examine the pilgrim Dante on his faith (as the apostles James and John will shortly examine him on hope

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and love, respectively). In Canto 25 the soul of Peter glows red with righteous indignation as he condemns the greed and corruption of his successors in the Roman see, in particular Dante’s contemporaries POPE BONIFACE VIII, POPE CLEMENT V, and even the reigning pope at the time of the Paradiso’s composition, POPE JOHN XXII. He compares them unfavorably to early martyred popes, and he charges Dante to report what he has heard when he returns to earth (Paradiso 27, ll. 10–66). Thus Dante presents himself as having Peter’s own blessing in his condemnation of the corrupt papacy of his time. Peter Damian, Saint (ca. 1007–1072) Peter Damian was an influential Benedictine abbot and cardinal of the 11th-century church, an adviser to popes, and an avid reformer. No doubt because of his strong advocacy for the monastic life Dante places him with the contemplatives in the seventh sphere of Paradise, the heaven of Saturn, where he acts as chief spokesman for the contemplative souls in that canto, calling for the reform of the greedy clergy of Dante’s time (Canto 21, ll. 43–139). Peter Damian was born in RAVENNA circa 1007 to an obscure family. Traditional accounts say he was an orphan, that he was in danger of starvation, that he was sent by his brother to tend swine, but these are all legends that became attached to him. We know that his elder brother, Damiano, was archdeacon of Ravenna and saw to his education (so that out of gratitude Peter adopted his brother’s name). From Ravenna Peter went to Faenza and Parma to further his study of the liberal arts. His education completed, he became a teacher in Ravenna and gained a good reputation in that regard before, in about 1035, he was inspired by the small ascetic communities around Ravenna to become a hermit himself, joining the community at Fonte Avellana in the Apennines. The hermits near Ravenna had been greatly influenced by Saint Romuald (ca. 950–1027), whose biography Peter Damian was to write in 1042. When he became abbot of Fonte Avellana in 1043, Peter reorganized life at the monastery to conform more to the Benedictine Rule, while keeping the core ascetic ideals of Romuald.

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Petrarch, Francesco

At Fonte Avellana Peter became famous for his eloquent sermons (some reportedly six hours in length, according to his first biographer, John of Lodi). He also spent time teaching at other monasteries, founded several new houses, and oversaw still others that had been put into his care. More significantly for Dante’s purposes Peter also became embroiled in the controversy over simoniac clergy and the call for reform that swept the church in the mid-1040s. Giovanni Gualberti was causing a stir in Italy by claiming that the sacraments performed by simoniac priests were invalid and had called for laity in Lombardy and TUSCANY to boycott services led by clergy accused of simony. Peter Damian, whose more moderate position ultimately triumphed, severely condemned corruption in the clergy, calling for significant reform, but upheld the validity of sacraments performed by all ordained clergy. Peter lobbied Pope Gregory VI to work for reform and he joined Emperor Henry III in efforts to reform the papacy itself. Unlike other major reformers of his time, such as Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII), Peter believed that reform must be spearheaded by both the church and the empire, and not by the clergy alone. After performing various services, including diplomatic missions, for a number of popes (including Popes Clement II, Leo IX, and Victor II), he was—over his strong objections—appointed cardinal bishop of Ostia by Pope Stephen IX in 1057. As cardinal Peter helped Pope Nicholas II reform papal elections in 1059 and wrote the Disceptatio synodalis in support of the legitimacy of Pope Alexander II’s pontificate against the antipope Honorius II. He is known to have written an open letter to his fellow cardinals in which he admonished them that the dignity of their office was based not on rich robes or armed escorts but on the virtue of their characters; it may have been the sentiments of this letter that inspired Dante to depict him as the fiery opponent of clerical wealth in the PARADISO. Peter was also the author of De divina omnipotentia, a text that expresses a fairly extreme view of God’s omnipotence and man’s impotence, one that has earned Peter Damian the rather undeserved reputation as an anti-intellectual. In fact he was one of

the most learned men of his day and strongly advocated better education of clergy as one step toward church reform. Peter Damian died at the monastery of Santa Maria in Faenza in 1072. He left a legacy of reform that included support for the ideal of apostolic poverty that would, in the next century and a half, culminate in the life of SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI and the establishment of the mendicant orders. Petrarch, Francesco (Francis) (1304–1374) Dante’s immediate successor as the acknowledged greatest Italian poet was Petrarch, now generally regarded as one of the founders of the “humanist” movement that flowered in the European Renaissance, a movement aimed at resurrecting the study of Greek and Roman classics and at focusing attention on life in the material world rather than the afterlife. Unlike his younger contemporary GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO, Petrarch does not overtly raise up Dante as his great inspiration, but Petrarch could not escape Dante’s literary influence as the great poet of the Tuscan tongue. Petrarch’s father, as was Dante a White GUELPH, was (also as Dante) exiled from FLORENCE in 1302. He fled to AREZZO, where Petrarch was born in 1304. The family moved in 1314 to Avignon, where Petrarch’s father worked as a notary under POPE CLEMENT V. Following his father’s wishes, Petrarch studied law at Montpellier from 1319 to 1323, and then at Bologna until 1325, but he was more interested in studying classical literature than law, and in 1326 he returned to Avignon, where he was employed as a diplomat by Cardinal Giacomo Colonna. With access to the great papal library in Avignon Petrarch studied and transcribed many classical manuscripts and before 1330 published a scholarly edition of the history of Rome by LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS).. According to his own poetry it was at the church of Sainte-Claire in Avignon on Good Friday 1327 that Petrarch first saw and fell in love with the lady called Laura de Noves, who became the inspiration for his best-known love lyrics. Some scholars believe Laura may have been the wife of Hugues de Sade and died during the Black Death in 1348. Others think Laura may simply be a literary con-

Philip IV the Fair vention and not a real woman at all. In either case the literary depiction of Petrarch’s relationship with Laura certainly owes a great deal to Dante’s relationship with Beatrice. After 1330 Petrarch traveled in France and Germany for several years before taking minor orders and becoming a canon of the Cathedral of Lombez in 1336, a position that ensured him a regular income and was most likely obtained through Cardinal Colonna’s influence. The position left Petrarch a great deal of time for study and writing, and through the 1330s and 1340s he completed his De viris illustribus (a collection of biographies of famous men) and began work on his projected epic poem, Africa. In Latin hexameters like Virgil’s AENEID the epic is concerned with the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, taking as its hero the Roman general Scipio Africanus. He also wrote his Secretum, a literary dialogue between a persona of himself and SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, who chastises him for what he calls idolatrous love of Laura. During this time inspired by the letters of MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Petrarch began to compose literary letters to his friends and acquaintances. He also continued to write lyric poetry in Italian. In 1341 Petrarch became the most famous writer in Europe when he was crowned poet laureate by the Roman Senate on Easter Sunday. But by the end of the 1340s Petrarch’s life took a decidedly downward turn, as both Laura and Cardinal Colonna died in the Black Death. In 1353 Petrarch moved to Milan, where for a time he performed diplomatic functions for the powerful Visconti family. Later he lived in Venice, then in 1368 received a gift of property near Padua. Here at Arqua he continued to work on his letters, his lyrics, and his scholarly transcriptions, while amassing the largest private library in Europe. From here he also continued to serve aristocratic patrons in a diplomatic capacity. During this time he also met and befriended his great contemporary Giovanni Boccaccio. It was Petrarch who convinced Boccaccio to abandon the writing of poetry in the vernacular and to compose his works in Latin. In this of course Petrarch was diametrically opposed to Dante, whose great poem was in the Tuscan vernacular and who had written a spirited

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defense of serious literature in the vernacular in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA. In his cultivation of personal achievement and his emphasis on the value of the physical world and of classical paganism, Petrarch anticipated the attitudes of the Renaissance. But in his belief that his posthumous reputation (and that of Boccaccio) would be based on Latin works, particularly his unfinished epic Africa, Petrarch was completely mistaken. It was his lyric poetry, most notably his love SONNETs to Laura, that inspired European literature for some 300 years after his death. The 366 poems in his Rime sparse (“Scattered Rhymes”) that chronicle his unrequited love for Laura, a love that transforms the poet’s psyche and continues after the lady’s death, owe a great deal to the courtly love tradition, especially as it had been transformed by Dante (whose Beatrice, of course, had also died yet remained the object of his love). The paradoxes of love and the concentration of the lover’s painful inner struggles that form the conventions of Petrarch’s sonnets separate him from Dante. They instead became the hallmarks of the “Petrarchan tradition,” which dominated European love poetry for centuries. Petrarch died at his home near Padua in July 1374. True to his lifelong devotion to classical literature, he is said to have been found with his head resting on an open volume of Virgil’s poetry. Philip IV the Fair (1268–1314) King of France from 1285 to 1314, Philip the Fair was responsible for the consolidation of power in the French monarchy and for the territorial expansion of his realm. He is also notorious for his feud with POPE BONIFACE VIII and for his suppression of the Knights Templars. Philip was the second son of Philip III. In 1284 he married Jeanne, the daughter and heir of Henry I, king of Navarre and count of Champagne. Through this marriage Philip gained control of Champagne and Navarre. Since his elder brother, Louis, died in 1276, Philip ascended to the throne after his father’s death in 1285. He took Ponthieu and Gascony from the English in 1295, and by 1305 he had extended royal authority over Lyons, Lille, Douai, and Bèthune. His younger brother, CHARLES

502 Pia de’ Tolomei VALOIS, invaded Italy at the invitation of Boniface VIII, ultimately occupying FLORENCE in 1302 and exiling all White GUELPH partisans. Philip’s quarrel with Boniface began with the question of taxation of the French clergy. Boniface had issued the bull Clericus laicos in 1296, declaring that the pope was the sole trustee of all clerical property, which was subject to no secular obligations, including taxation. Philip responded by blocking all gold, silver, and other valuables moving from France to Italy. In 1302 Philip called the first Estates General in order to condemn the pope. Boniface responded by excommunicating Philip. In a move of unprecedented audacity Philip responded by sending officers to seize the pope himself at his palace in Anagni. Although Boniface was subsequently freed by the populace of Anagni, the octogenarian pope never recovered from the shock of the arrest and died shortly thereafter. When the next pope, Benedict XI, died after a brief tenure, Philip’s influence among the cardinals led to the election of the Frenchman POPE CLEMENT V, who moved the seat of the papacy to Avignon and remained the tool of the French king for the extent of his period in office. In the meantime in order to finance his various military schemes, Philip instituted regular taxation of his realm and set up a national fiscal bureaucracy that helped him centralize power. He also began to harass Jews and Lombard bankers in particular in order to seize their wealth. Most important he sought to get his hands on the vast treasure of the crusading order of the Knights Templars. With the help of Clement, who issued a command suppressing the order in 1312, Philip persecuted the Templars, burning the grand master Jacques de Mollay at the stake in 1314 and seizing the order’s assets in France. Philip died from a fall from his horse on November 29, 1314. Three of his sons—Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV—became kings of France. His daughter, Isabella, married King Edward I of England in 1308. Dante never mentions Philip by name in the COMEDY but alludes to him several times, all critically. In PURGATORIO 7, ll. 109–110, the poet SORDELLO refers to Philip as “the Plague of France.” In Canto 20 of the Purgatorio HUGH CAPET, founder OF

of the Capetian line of French kings, alludes to his descendant Philip as a “second Pilate” (l. 91), condemning him for his seizure of Boniface, the vicar of Christ (l. 87), for his suppression of the Knights Templars (ll. 91–93), and for his territorial expansion (ll. 46–63). It is also clear that Philip is represented allegorically by the giant who seizes the harlot in the heavenly pageant in Purgatorio 32–33. Pia de’ Tolomei (d. 1295) The first woman to speak to Dante in the PURGATORIO refers to herself in Canto 5 as “la Pia.” She identifies herself briefly with one of the most famous lines of the entire COMEDY: “Siena gave me life, Maremma death” (l. 134). And she goes on to say that the one who pledged faith to her with a ring knows about her death. Early commentators identified this figure with Pia de’ Tolomei of Siena. This Pia was a member of the noble Tolomei family and married Nello (or Pagenello) de’ Pannocchieschi of Castello della Pietra. Nello was from the Sienese Maremma, a swampy area in the southwestern part of TUSCANY. He was a GUELPH gentleman who had been podestà of Volterra in 1277, a captain of the Tuscan Guelphs in 1284, and later podestà of Lucca in 1313. He was still alive when Dante was writing his poem, a circumstance that may explain in part why Dante never mentions him, or gives us Pia’s full name. Pia de’ Tolomei was murdered on orders from her husband in 1295. Some say that the murder was done in secret and that the means of her death was unknown. Others say that on Nello’s orders Pia was thrown to her death from the window of Nello’s Maremma castle. Some commentators claim that Nello’s motive was his desire to wed the widow of Guy de Montfort, the countess Margherita degli Aldobrandeschi. Others claim that the jealous husband suspected Pia of adultery. Recent scholars have questioned the early commentators’ identification of “la Pia” with Pia de’ Tolomei. There are simply not enough details given in her four-line speech to be sure. However, what details we do have—that she was born in Siena, that she died in Maremma, and that her husband was a party to her death—are all consistent with

Plato her being the “Pia” who married Nello (see Canto 5, ll. 133–136). Pier delle Vigne (ca. 1190–1249) Pier delle Vigne was an important statesman, rising to the position of chancellor under the Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA; he was also one of the most significant poets of the Sicilian school of lyric poetry introduced by GIACOMO DA LENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINI, “THE NOTARY”)—the author of the first Italian courtly poetry in the vernacular. By modern readers Pier is most often remembered as the suicide who converses with Dante in Canto 13 of the INFERNO. Pier was born in Capua in southern Italy and studied law at Bologna. He was introduced to Frederick II by the archbishop of Palermo in 1220 and subsequently became a notary in Frederick’s court in Naples. Here he met fellow notary Giacomo da Lentino and began to write courtly poetry after the fashion of the Provençal troubadours. Five of his poems survive, including part of a tenso or debate poem with Giacomo. His official letters also survive, written in eloquent Latin prose. He quickly became one of Frederick’s closest advisers and rose rapidly in the court, becoming a judge in 1225, protonotary of Sicily in 1246, and finally chancellor of the Empire in about 1248. During the decade of the 1230s he was involved in a number of diplomatic negotiations for the emperor, including helping to draft the Constitutions of Melfi, the laws that were to govern Sicily until the age of Napoleon. In his years as Frederick’s close adviser Pier seems to have made enemies at the Sicilian court, who, jealous of his influence with Frederick, trumped up charges of treason against him shortly after his promotion to chancellor. Pier was convicted of treason, dragged through the streets of TUSCANY in chains, and blinded with a hot iron. He died in prison, possibly under torture. However, most believe the version accepted by Dante: Pier, unable to bear the dishonor of imprisonment and perhaps wishing to escape further torture, killed himself in prison in April 1249 by dashing his head against the wall. Dante places Pier delle Vigne in the Wood of Suicides in the Inferno (Canto 13, ll. 58–78). His

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soul, speaking from within a tree after Dante breaks off a branch to release his voice, speaks in a complex rhetorical style that reflects his own poetic voice. In his final words as Dante presents them, he proclaims his innocence and his undying loyalty to the emperor. Pisa A Tuscan city located on the ARNO River, Pisa is only two miles from the Mediterranean. It became an important port city in medieval times. In the ninth and 10th centuries the Pisans took control of Sardinia and the Balearic Islands from the Saracens. Their role in the Crusades helped them gain valuable commercial relationships with Eastern countries, increasing the strength and influence of the city. During the 12th and 13th centuries Pisan power was at its apex. Pisa controlled the Italian islands and much of the coast and conducted trade throughout the Mediterranean. Supporters of the GHIBELLINEs, the Pisans suffered when Hohenstaufen rule in Italy came to an end with the defeat of MANFRED. Genoa, with whom they warred for 14 years, ultimately defeated the Pisans in a sea battle at Meloria in 1284. This event finally ended Pisan dominance in the region, and the city ultimately lost Sardinia to Aragon in 1325. As a Ghibelline power, Pisa was a bitter enemy of FLORENCE, but it is mainly because of the city’s treatment of UGOLINO DELLA GHERARDESCA’s innocent offspring that Dante assails Pisa in Canto 33 of the INFERNO. He calls her a “blot of shame” on Italy (79) and asks the people of the Capraia and Gorgona islands to dam “up the River Arno at its mouth” (83), in hopes that the residents of Pisa might all drown. Stephanie Fritts Plato (ca. 428 B.C.E.–347 B.C.E.) Plato was the second of the three great philosophers of ancient Greece, the successor to Socrates and the teacher of ARISTOTLE. Unlike his mentor, Socrates, Plato left a substantial number of philosophical treatises, mostly in the form of dialogues in which Socrates is the chief speaker, and through these became one of the most influential thinkers in the Western philosophical tradition.

504 Portinari, Folco Plato was born in Athens about 428 B.C.E., the year after the death of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. His parents, Ariston and Perictone, were both from distinguished noble families—Ariston claimed descent from Codrus, the last king of Athens, and Perictone from the lawgiver Solon. Plato was given a typical liberal education for his time and was encouraged to enter public service, but he held back, dissatisfied with the corruption in Athenian politics. He became a friend and student of Socrates in about 407 B.C.E. When Socrates was condemned to death by the Athenian democracy in 399 B.C.E., Plato left Athens for Megera and spent several years traveling through Greece and Egypt, living briefly with Dionysius the Elder in Syracuse in 388 B.C.E. When he returned to Athens, Plato founded a school at the Academy, where he built upon the teachings of Socrates, enriched by the ideas he had learned through his travels. He continued to teach until his death in 347 B.C.E. at the age of 81. Plato’s early dialogues, including the Apology, the Meno, and the Gorgias, are essentially dramatizations of the ideas of Socrates concerning the unity of virtue, happiness, and knowledge. Later he began to work out a comprehensive philosophy embracing the individual soul, the state, and the universe, and this great theme lies at the center of his most important dialogues—the Symposium, the Phaedo, the Timaeus, the Phaedrus, the Philebus, and the Republic. Central to Plato’s philosophical system was the doctrine of forms, discussed at length in the Phaedo: These are the universal and eternal archetypes that are the only ultimate reality, giving meaning to the temporal physical world. The supreme form is the Idea of the Good. In the Republic, Plato’s most famous dialogue, he is concerned with individual justice as related to social justice and the ideal state, which can only be understood as it relates to the Idea of the Good. As he does Aristotle and Socrates, Dante places Plato in Limbo (INFERNO 4, ll. 134–135). But for Dante as for most medieval thinkers Plato was known chiefly by reputation, since the only Platonic dialogue available in Western Europe at the time was the Timaeus, best known for its conten-

tion that human souls descended into bodies from the stars, and thus that humans are highly susceptible to the influence of the heavens. Dante refers to this concept both in the CONVIVIO (2.13.5 and 4.21.2) and in the PARADISO (Canto 4, ll. 22–24 and 49–50), where Beatrice shows the errors in Plato’s reasoning. In all Dante mentions Plato by name 18 times, most of them in the Convivio, and most of them concerning the relationship of cosmology and the human soul as discussed in the Timaeus. Portinari, Folco (d. 1289) Folco Portinari was an esteemed citizen of FLORENCE who was appointed by Cardinal Latino as one of the city’s magistrates in 1281–82, in addition to serving as the city’s prior in 1282, 1285, and 1287. But most significantly for Dante Portinari was the father of the poet’s beloved Beatrice. The Portinari family were neighbors of the Alighieris in the San Piero Maggione section of Florence. Folco was married to Cilia de’ Caponsucchi, with whom he had five sons and five daughters, of whom Beatrice was the eldest, and it was in Portinari’s home that the nine-year-old Dante first met the young Beatrice in 1274. In Chapter 22 of the VITA NUOVA Dante reports the death of Portinari and the effects of her father’s death upon Beatrice, who “was filled with bitterest sorrow.” He goes on to describe hearing conversations among the ladies of Florence who had observed Beatrice’s grief. He says that these overheard conversations inspired him to write two SONNETs. The first of these is addressed to the Florentine ladies. In it Dante asks for news about Beatrice. In the second sonnet these ladies become the speakers, responding to the first sonnet and describing Beatrice’s look of pain since the death of her father. By all accounts Portinari was a good father and a respected man. In the Vita nuova Dante himself calls him “exceedingly good” and says that upon his death he “pass[ed] most certainly into eternal glory.” He was buried in the chapel at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, a hospital he had founded in 1288. Stephanie Fritts

Pythagoras Provenzan Salvani (ca. 1220–1269) Provenzan Salvani was a prominent GHIBELLINE leader of Siena. He was descended from the Cacciaconti family, who were the traditional feudal lords of Salvani. Provenzan was born about 1220, since his name begins to appear in public documents in 1247. He rose to dictatorial power in Siena and is best known for leading the Sienese forces at the Battle of Montaperti on September 4, 1260, when the Ghibelline alliance crushed the Florentine GUELPHs. It was Provenzan who, at the subsequent Council of Empoli, most strongly advocated razing FLORENCE to the ground, only to be forestalled by the staunch refusal of the Florentine Ghibelline leader FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI to destroy his native city (see INFERNO, Canto 10, ll. 91–93). Provenzan was made podestà (chief magistrate) of Montepulciano in 1261 and in 1262 was elected podestà of AREZZO, but he declined to serve. In February 1266 Provenzan and the Ghibellines suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Benevento, and he began to lose his power and influence. After once more leading Siena to defeat against the Florentine Guelphs at Colle di Val d’Elsa in June 1269, Provenzan was captured and beheaded on the field of battle. Dante places Provenzan in the first terrace of Purgatory, where he is seen purging the sin of pride (Canto 10, ll. 109–138). Here he is pointed out to the pilgrim Dante by the artist ODERISI OF GUBBIO, who refers to Provenzan as an example of the transience of earthly fame: Provenzan was known throughout TUSCANY in his time, Oderisi says, but now is barely remembered even in Siena. Assuming that Provenzan must have repented late, Dante wonders how he has reached this level of Purgatory so quickly. In answer Oderisi alludes to an incident that occurred in Siena late in Provenzan’s career. A good friend of Provenzan’s was captured by CHARLES OF ANJOU (probably at the Battle of Tagliacozza, where Charles defeated Conradin and destroyed forever the power of the Hohenstaufen). Charles demanded a ransom of 10,000 gold florins to be paid within a month, or the friend’s life was forfeit. Unable to raise such a sum on his own, the haughty Provenzan humbled himself by begging in the Piazza del Campo, the square of Siena. The

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Sienese were moved by Provenzan’s humility and provided sufficient alms to free the prisoner. For Dante this act of humility was enough to move Provenzan to this first terrace of Purgatory more quickly. Puccio Galigai (Sciancato) (late 13th century) One of the “five noble thieves of FLORENCE” whom Dante places in circle eight, bolgia seven, of Hell (the bolgia of thieves), Puccio is the only one among these thieves whom Dante identifies by his full name (Canto 25, l. 148). Puccio, nicknamed Sciancato (the lame one), was a Florentine GHIBELLINE who was banished along with his children in 1268. He seems to have returned in 1280 when the Ghibellines agreed to a peace treaty with the GUELPHs. Puccio was known as a thief, but as one with gracious manners, according to an early source. One commentator claims that because of Puccio’s infirmity he was unable to flee from his crimes. Thus when apprehended, he was forced to try to talk his way out of punishment, apparently by feigning ignorance, implying that, as a kleptomaniac, he was unaware of what he was doing. In Dante’s vision of the hell of thieves the sinners are unable to keep possession even of their own bodies, which are eternally stolen from them by serpents, whose form the sinners then take; they must then hunt down another human body that they can steal for themselves. In the horrifying scene of the INFERNO in which Puccio appears, he first stands with the shades of two other thieves (Agnello and Buoso). But Agnello is attacked by a six-legged serpent (which proves to be another Florentine thief, Cianfa), who steals his bodily form and leaves him to take on the form of the reptile. Buoso is subsequently bitten by a snake and loses his human form to another thief, FRANCESCO DEI CAVALCANTI. Thus of the five noble thieves only Puccio escapes transformation in this canto—perhaps a deliberate irony, since as “the lame one,” Puccio would have been the easiest for the serpents to overtake. Pythagoras (ca. 570–ca. 490 B.C.E.) Pythagoras was perhaps the most influential of the pre-Socratic

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Pythagoras

philosophers in ancient Greece. He was born in Samos and according to tradition studied under the philosophers Thales of Miletus (thought of as the first “natural philosopher” or scientist), Anaximander (founder of the study of astronomy), and Pherecydes of Syros (a thinker who combined philosophy and mythology). Pythagoras is rumored to have visited Egypt, Babylon, and India to learn as much as he could from the sages of other lands. Ultimately he founded a school in Croton, a Greek city of southern Italy, in about 530 B.C.E. The school focused on moral education—both religious and scientific—aimed at reforming society. Pythagoras’s teaching included strict self-discipline, including dietary restrictions. According to legend a good deal of animosity arose toward his teachings at Croton, so that ultimately Pythagoras left Croton for Metapontion in Lucania, where he died about 490 B.C.E. Pythagoras left no written texts of his own, so it is difficult to separate what Pythagoras himself taught from what was later attributed to him. But his reputation was known to ARISTOTLE, from whom Dante obtained much of his knowledge about Pythagoras. According to MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO Pythagoras was the first sage to call himself a “philosopher” or “lover of wisdom,” an attribution Dante repeats in the CONVIVIO 2.15.12 and 3.11.5. Pythagoras’s best known and most controversial concept is the idea of metempsychosis or the “transmigration” of souls—the theory that the immortal

soul passes from body to body after death, so that it may move from a human being into a bird or a dog (Pythagoras may have first heard of this concept from Pherecydes). This belief led him to the assertion that all souls (whether of animals or men) were of equal value, a doctrine Dante alludes to in Convivio 4.21.3. Pythagoras also was reputed to have put forward the idea that the Earth was a planet that revolved (along with the other planets and the fixed stars) around a central fire, from which it was shielded by the Antictona or “counter-Earth” that revolved at the same speed between Earth and the central fire (see Convivio 3.5.4). Central to Pythagoras’s philosophy, according to tradition, is the principle that number and the relationships and properties of number are the essence of all things in the universe. He divided numbers into “odd” (“limited”) and “even” (“unlimited”) and based on these proposed 10 basic oppositions (including right/left, masculine/feminine, rest/ motion, good/evil, light/darkness, finite/infinite, one/many), which are fundamental to the harmony of the universe. Mathematical rules governed the motion of the stars and planets, Pythagoras claimed. Tradition says that his numerical studies resulted in the discovery of musical harmony and influenced the development of medical theory in holding that the human body contained the opposites cold/warm and wet/dry, which a physician must balance to put the body in harmony.

R Ravenna Ravenna is a city in Romagna in northern Italy. Its location on the Adriatic Sea made it an important port city in the time of Augustus, and after 402 C.E. it was the seat of the western emperors, the capital of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and after the emperor JUSTINIAN I’s time the location of the residence of the governors of the Byzantine Empire. Its churches and monuments were decorated by magnificent mosaics, and in Dante’s time the city was ruled by GUIDO NOVELLO DA POLENTA, one of Italy’s great patrons of literature and learning. Still in VERONA in spring 1318, Dante accepted an invitation from Guido to go to Ravenna. There Dante moved with his sons, Pietro and Iacopo, and with Guido’s help was able to call his wife, GEMMA DONATI, and daughter, Antonia, to Ravenna as well. Surrounded by his family and by a circle of other prominent Florentines and intellectuals, Dante spent the last years of his life in relative comfort under Guido’s patronage and was buried in Ravenna after his death in 1321. Dante mentions Ravenna in Canto 27 of the INFERNO, when the pilgrim encounters GUIDO DA MONTEFELTRO in the eighth circle of Hell, among the fraudulent counselors. Guido asks for news from home, and the pilgrim reports on the political situation in many Italian cities, including Ravenna, which is stable, according to Dante, under the rule of the da Polenta family. In Canto 28 of the PURGATORIO the sound of the wind in the Earthly Paradise reminds the pilgrim of the pine forests of Ravenna. Ravenna

is also mentioned as the birthplace of FRANCESCA DA RIMINI (who was Guido Novello da Polenta’s aunt) in the second circle of Hell (Inferno 5, l. 97). Finally Ravenna is the location of a monastery founded by SAINT PETER DAMIAN, whom the pilgrim encounters in the heaven of Saturn (PARADISO 21). Stephanie Fritts Rinaldo (or Reginaldo) degli Scrovegni (d. ca. 1289) A notorious 13th-century usurer and miser, Rinaldo degli Scrovegni was one of the wealthiest men in Padua in his day. He first appears in written records in 1263, and records indicate that he died between March 1288 and October 1289. Rinaldo’s reputation for greed was legendary in Dante’s time. One story says that on his deathbed Rinaldo enjoined his son to preserve his accumulated treasure as long as he could without spending any of it, for, Rinaldo is reputed to have said, in wealth is one’s strength and power. Rinaldo is even reputed to have asked for the keys to his strongbox at the moment of his death, so that no one could rob him. That legend may be apocryphal, but it certainly illustrates Rinaldo’s avaricious reputation. In view of the story, however, it is ironic that not long after Rinaldo’s death, his son, Enrico, used a large portion of his father’s ill-acquired wealth to commission the great artist GIOTTO DI BONDONE to paint the famous frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Giotto’s frescoes (painted between 1303 and 1305) are world famous, hailed by some art 507

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Rinieri de’ Paolucci da Calboli

historians as the beginning of Renaissance painting because of Giotto’s realistic portrayal of the human form. Rumor has it that Enrico built the chapel to expiate his father’s sins, but Dante suggests that Rinaldo was sent to Hell. In Canto 17 of the INFERNO (ll. 64–95) in the Hell of the usurers in circle seven, Dante is addressed by a sinner who bears the family crest of the Scrovegni—a blue sow on a field of white. Early commentators identified the speaker as Rinaldo (though he is never named, and a good number of the Scrovegni family were involved in usury). Scrovegni is rude to Dante, complaining that he is the only Paduan among numerous Florentines, all of whom annoy him with their crying out for the “sovereign knight” (presumably their fellow Florentine GIOVANNI BUIAMONTE) to join them. Recognizing that Dante is alive, Scrovegni then tells him to let it be known that he will soon be joined by his fellow Paduan usurer Vitaliano (thought to be Vitaliano del Dente). He also tells Dante to go away and ends by making a hideous face. Rinieri de’ Paolucci da Calboli (d. 1296) Rinieri da Calboli was a member of the Paolucci, a prominent GUELPH family of Forlì. His career accordingly reflected the various successes and failures of the Guelph faction in his native territory of Romagna. Rinieri was podestà (the chief executive) of the city of Faenza in 1247 and later was made podestà of Parma in 1252 and of RAVENNA in 1265. In 1276 Rinieri attempted to subjugate his home city of Forlì but was forced to retreat into his fortress at Calboli. The great GHIBELLINE captain GUIDO DA MONTEFELTRO (who appears in Canto 27 of the INFERNO) besieged Rinieri’s castle and, after forcing Rinieri’s surrender, destroyed the stronghold. Rinieri returned to power some 16 years later, however, when he was elected podestà of Faenza again in 1292. But the Ghibellines reasserted their authority in 1294, expelling Rinieri and the Ghelphs. In 1296, however, while the Ghibellines of Faenza had their forces in the field attacking the city of Bologna, Rinieri seized power again in Faenza. When the Ghibelline army returned to the city, though, Rinieri was killed in the ensuing struggle.

Dante puts Rinieri on the ledge of the envious in Purgatory, where he accompanies the Ghibelline judge GUIDO DEL DUCA. It is unclear why Rinieri should be among the envious, unless one interprets his many attempts to regain power as motivated by envy of those who had taken his influence. Dante pictures the former Guelph partisan as overcome by sadness at Guido’s prophecy that Rinieri’s grandson, Fulcieri da Calboli, as podestà of FLORENCE in 1303, would (at the instigation of the Black Guelphs) cause the death and destruction of the White Guelphs of the city (PURGATORIO 14, ll. 58–69). Ripheus Ripheus was a Trojan prince described briefly in Virgil’s AENEID as the most just of all the Trojans (Aeneid 2.426–427). On the strength of this short passage Dante places Ripheus in the Heaven of the Just in Canto 20 of the PARADISO (ll. 67–72). At the same time recognizing that Ripheus was a pagan Trojan living more than 1,000 years before the birth of Christ, the poet has the frustrated pilgrim Dante question Ripheus’s blessed status, asking, “How can this be?” (l. 82). The eagle that speaks in Canto 20—a composite being made up of all the just souls of this sphere— explains to the pilgrim that Ripheus so loved righteousness that God granted him a vision of Christ’s future redemption of humankind and then baptized him with the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), so that even a millennium before the incarnation Ripheus exhibited an explicit faith in the Gospel (ll. 121–129). Ultimately the eagle praises God for his predestination of the souls of the elect and remarks that the names of the elect that appear in the Book of Life are unknown even to those already saved. Theologically Dante relies on SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS for his assertion that God can and does elicit faith even in situations when any normal form of baptism would be impossible, as in the case of Ripheus. Assuming that Ripheus’s extraordinary devotion to justice could not occur without the prompting of God’s grace, Dante explains that Ripheus’s prompt acceptance of this grace inspired God to grant Ripheus the additional grace of revelation (ll. 118–121). In this Dante is following

Romeo di Villeneuve Aquinas’s distinction between “operating” and “cooperating” grace (ST 1.2, q. 111, a. 2). In a later passage Aquinas also proposes the idea of a special revelation that might bestow salvation on preChristian pagans if they respond to it with explicit faith: Many of the gentiles received revelations of Christ, as is clear from their predictions. Thus we read (Job 19.25): “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” The Sibyl too foretold certain things about Christ, as Augustine states (Contra Faust. xiii, 15). (ST 2.2, q. 2, a. 7)

Robert of Anjou, king of Naples (1277–1343) Robert was duke of Calabria and the ruler of Naples from 1309 until his death in 1343. The son of Charles II of Anjou and brother of CHARLES MARTEL, he was introduced to political conflict early on. He and two brothers spent seven years in captivity (1288–95) as hostages in Catalonia and were freed through negotiations between his father and James II of Aragon. Upon the death of his father Robert claimed the throne of Naples and, with the support of POPE CLEMENT V, was crowned king, deposing the rightful heir to the throne, Charles Martel’s son, Charles Robert. As king Robert sought unsuccessfully to win Sicily back for the Crown of Naples but was never able to do so. A staunch GUELPH, Robert was bitterly opposed to Emperor HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG, a stance that may explain Dante’s dislike for him. Robert is mentioned in Canto 8 of Dante’s PARADISO, the heaven of Venus. Though the souls here are filled with love and happiness, they share Dante’s concern for political matters on earth. Here Dante encounters the soul of Charles Martel, former titular king of Hungary and Robert’s brother. Robert’s character and methods of ruling dominate the conversation of this meeting. Charles (whose son Robert deposed) describes his brother as greedy and suggests that he and his Catalan supporters have corrupted the government of Naples. Dante wonders how such a great family could produce such an inadequate ruler as Robert. In line 93 the pilgrim asks, “How can sweet seed produce such sour fruit?” Charles insists that heredity cannot be

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blamed for Robert’s disappointing behavior, but that a man’s circumstances can also influence his character. Robert is reasoned to have been a man who was forced to follow a path that he was not born to, suggesting that he was not given the capabilities required of a king. Charles alludes to this at the end of the canto: “And you make a king / of a man whose calling was to preach: / you find yourselves on roads not meant for you” (ll. 146–148). Despite the assessments of Charles Martel and Dante, King Robert of Naples is regarded by many historians as an influential ruler who strengthened the kingdom of Naples during his reign. He was known as “Robert the Wise” and was called by some “the peacemaker of Italy.” Mandi Tollet Romeo di Villeneuve (ca. 1170–1250) Romeo di Villeneuve was the grand seneschal, or chief minister, of Raymond Berenger IV, the last count of Provence (1209–45). Romeo was born in about 1170 and by 1229 was serving as Count Raymond’s chief minister. In that year he was the count’s ambassador to Genoa and was granted control of several properties in Genoan territories. He is known to have been a friend of the Italian troubadour SORDELLO, whom Dante introduces in Canto 6 of the PURGATORIO. Romeo is also known to have become embroiled in a sea battle while on another diplomatic mission in 1241 and to have captured a Pisan vessel and taken it to port at Nice. In 1245 Count Raymond died, leaving his youngest daughter, Beatrice, as his heir and Romeo as her guardian. Romeo seems to have negotiated the marriage of Beatrice to CHARLES OF ANJOU (brother of King Louis IX of France), who, on the basis of his wife’s inheritance, moved in to rule Provence and put it under the control of the French monarchy. Romeo died in 1250. Dante places Romeo in the sphere of Mercury in the PARADISO, among the seekers of honor (Canto 6, ll. 127–142). Here he is introduced by Emperor JUSTINIAN I, whose narrative follows a popular legend concerning the Provençal minister. Perhaps because the name Romeo refers to a pilgrim who has been to Rome (or, by extension, to any pilgrim), a legend grew that Romeo had been a poor,

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Rudolph of Hapsburg

wandering pilgrim who, returning from a pilgrimage to the shrine of SAINT JAMES THE APOSTLE, became attached to the court of Count Raymond. Here, the legend said, he became indispensable, not only as the manager of the count’s treasury but also as negotiator of the marriages for the count’s four daughters. Raymond’s eldest daughter, Margaret, was married to King Louis of France. His second daughter, Eleanor, married King HENRY III OF ENGLAND. Sancha, the count’s third daughter, married Henry III’s brother, Richard, earl of Cornwall, who in 1257 was elected king of the Romans. And of course Beatrice married Charles of Anjou—who after defeating MANFRED became king of Naples and Sicily. Thus under Romeo’s guidance all four of Raymond’s daughters married kings. Romeo’s success, however, gained him enemies among the jealous courtiers of Provence, and a number of them complained to Count Raymond, accusing Romeo of appropriating treasury funds for his own use. Raymond demanded an accounting from Romeo, who, after demonstrating that the treasury had grown substantially under his care, put on his pilgrim’s garb, took up his staff, and left Raymond’s court to wander in his old age as he had done before. The legend, of course, cannot be true, since Raymond preceded Romeo in death and since Romeo did not die in exile or disgrace. Dante chooses the story, however, probably because he saw a similarity between Romeo’s fate and his own—forced to wander as a pilgrim through life after false accusations of fiscal mismanagement. Rudolph of Hapsburg (1218–1291) Rudolph of Hapsburg was the son of Albert IV. Like his father, he was the count of Hapsburg, and he was elected as the first Holy Roman Emperor from the House of Austria in 1273. Dante places him in Purgatory because he had the opportunity to draw Italy into the Empire and thus confer stability on Dante’s native country but failed to do so, concentrating on German affairs instead. In Canto 7 of the PURGATORIO the poet SORDELLO of Goito guides the pilgrim and Virgil through the Valley of the Princes. Here the pilgrim sees European rulers who were neglectful of both

their spiritual and temporal duties as they enjoyed the wealth and power of their positions. Fittingly the valley where these souls do their penance is particularly lush and beautiful—much more so than anything any of them ruled over in life. As part of their atonement the other rulers sing, “Salve, Regina” (“Hail, O Queen [of Mercy]).” Interestingly Rudolph does not join in the song. Rudolph is comforted in Purgatory by the Bohemian king Ottokar II, who was his bitter political enemy in life. This reconciliation between two former enemies demonstrates the way the souls find redemption in Purgatory, by making amends for former transgressions and demonstrating sincere changes in attitudes and behavior. Rudolph is also mentioned unfavorably by Dante in the CONVIVIO, 4.3.6, as a “non-Roman emperor.” This criticism is due not only to Rudolph’s failure to join Italy with the Holy Roman Empire, but also because Rudolph was never crowned emperor in Rome. Rudolph was the father of Emperor Albert I and the father-in-law of CHARLES MARTEL. He died in 1291. Stephanie Fritts Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila (d. ca. 1295) Ruggieri degli Ubaldini was the nephew of the prominent GHIBELLINE cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, who is probably the cardinal mentioned among the heretics in Canto 10 of the INFERNO (ll. 119–120). Ruggieri’s father, Ubaldino della Pila, is numbered among the gluttons in Canto 24 of the PURGATORIO (l. 29). Along with his brother, who became the bishop of Bologna, Ruggieri decided to follow his uncle into the church and rose to the rank of archdeacon under his brother in Bologna. In 1278 Ruggieri was named to succeed Federigo Visconti as archbishop of PISA. Pisa was governed by the GUELPH party under the young NINO (UGOLINO) VISCONTI, who had risen to power with the help of his grandfather, Count UGOLINO DELLA GHERARDESCA. When Nino and Ugolino fell out, Nino sought Ruggieri’s support, but the Ghibelline archbishop declined, choosing instead to join Ugolino and several Ghibelline families in a plot to oust Nino and place Ugolino in power in his place.

Rusticucci, Jacopo 511 To avoid suspicion, Ugolino withdrew from the city to his personal estate at Settio, and Nino was overthrown and driven into exile in 1288. Left in control, Ruggieri was quick to seize power for himself. Ruggieri now invited Ugolino back into the city, but upon the latter’s arrival on June 30, the archbishop betrayed his former coconspirator, falsely charging the count with betraying the fortresses of Pisa to its enemies in FLORENCE and Lucca. Ugolino was subsequently imprisoned, along with two of his younger sons and two grandsons, in a tower called the Torre della Muda, belonging to the Ghibelline Gualandi family. After holding Ugolino and his family there for six months, Ruggieri allegedly had the tower sealed up and allowed the prisoners to starve to death. Thereafter the tower became known as the Torre della Fame (Tower of Hunger). Ruggieri’s tenure as Pisa’s leader lasted less than a year, and he was replaced in 1289 by the famous Ghibelline captain GUIDO DA MONTEFELTRO (whom Dante places among the evil counselors in Canto 27 of the Inferno). But rumors of Ruggieri’s treacherous role in Ugolino’s death became widespread, and in 1295 he was stripped of his ecclesiastical office and sentenced to prison for life. Dante places Ruggieri in the ninth circle of Hell, in the second circle called Antenora, among the traitors to their country or party. Here he is eternally frozen in the ice of Cocytus along with his coconspirator and victim Ugolino, who gnaws continuously on the archbishop’s head. Thus the killer by starvation is devoured eternally by his own victim. When Dante encounters these sinners in Canto 30, Ugolino relates the whole story of his imprisonment and death, as an act of revenge on his murderer.

Rusticucci, Jacopo (13th century) Jacopo Rusticucci is one of a trio of Florentine sodomites whom Dante places in the seventh circle of Hell. He is with the better known Florentine GUELPH military heroes GUIDO GUERRA and TEGGHIAIO ALDOBRANDI, and when the three stop to speak with Dante, Jacopo is their spokesman. He blames his savage wife for driving him to the sin of sodomy. Then he asks Dante to say whether honor and valor still flourish in their native city. When Dante laments the decay of Florentine morality, the three sodomites must run to catch up with their group, and they ask that Dante keep their memory alive. Unfortunately Jacopo’s memory has not been preserved to the extent of his two companions. Little is known of his life beyond what Dante tells us in this canto. Jacopo’s name appears in Florentine records between 1235 and 1266. His family was not of the noble status of his two companions, but was rather of the merchant class. Still Jacopo was apparently wealthy and numbered Tegghiaio among his neighbors in the San Piero sector of FLORENCE. As a Guelph partisan Jacopo seems to have associated with Tegghiaio in political affairs, and the two are mentioned together in a public document from 1237. Early commentators call Jacopo a man of the people who, though of humble origin, became a respected, courageous, and affable knight. The commentators also say that his wife was so difficult to live with that he ultimately sent her home to live with her family—and turned to sodomy. It should be noted, however, that there is no other record beyond Dante’s COMEDY of Jacopo’s reputed sin.

S Sapia of Siena (ca. 1210–before 1289) Sapia was a Sienese noblewoman whom Dante places in the second terrace of Purgatory, the round of the envious (PURGATORIO 13, ll. 106–154). Here with her eyes sewn shut with iron thread Sapia describes how fervently she prayed for her own city’s destruction at the hands of the Florentine GUELPHs. Sapia was her name, she puns, but sapient (or “wise”) she was not. A member of the powerful Salvani family, Sapia was the paternal aunt of the Sienese dictator PROVENZAN SALVANI. She was married in about 1230 to another nobleman, Ghinibaldo Saracini, with whom she had five children. Sapia reputedly resented her nephew’s rise to power, perhaps at the expense of her husband. But her husband was dead by 1269, and it has been suggested that she may have been exiled from Siena at that time, living in the family castle of Castiglioncello, near Montereggioni. From this castle just five miles from Colle in the Val d’Elsa Sapia would have been able to witness the Battle of Colle on June 17, 1269, when her nephew, Provenzan Salvani, and the Sienese GHIBELLINEs were routed by the Florentine Guelphs with the aid of CHARLES OF ANJOU. From here she could have seen Provenzan defeated and beheaded on the battlefield. In Dante’s story she prayed for this outcome and was so overjoyed at Provenzan’s defeat that she claimed to have attained such bliss she did not care what God did to her now. At the time Dante presents her as seeing Provenzan’s

defeat as the answer to her prayer, but here in Purgatory she realizes that God had already determined the outcome of the battle—God would not answer such a prayer. Sapia is known to have given money in 1274 to a hospital that she and her husband had founded in 1265. She may have died soon afterward, for she tells the pilgrim Dante that she repented late and would not have reached this level of Purgatory so quickly were it not for the prayers of the famous Sienese holy man Pier Pettinaio. Pier, reputedly a Franciscan, was a comb seller renowned for his honesty and his piety, and for performing of miracles. He died in 1289, allegedly at the age of 109; thus Sapia must have been dead by that time. Scott, Michael (ca. 1175–ca. 1235) As his name suggests, Michael Scott was a Scottish philosopher, astrologer, and reputed necromancer attached to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA at Palermo. He is thought to have been born in Balwearie, Scotland. He is best known for his Latin translations of ARISTOTLE from Arabic texts provided in the commentaries of the Muslim philosopher Avicenna. Michael translated Aristotle’s De caelo (“On the Heavens”) as well as, probably, De anima and some of Aristotle’s treatises on biology. He is also known to have translated an astronomical study called De sphaera (“On the Spheres”) by the 12th-century Muslim astronomer Alpetragius, as well as commentaries on Aristotle by the Muslim philosopher AVERROËS. His original 512

Seneca works all concerned astrology and other occult sciences, a focus that probably helped establish his reputation as a magician and a soothsayer. A number of stories about Michael Scott’s abilities as a seer have survived. GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO introduces him in his Decameron, in the ninth story of the eighth day, as a renowned necromancer who had left two of his best disciples in FLORENCE. Michael is supposed to have made predictions about the death of Frederick II of Swabia, about Florence itself, and about Dante’s patron CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA (though the latter was not yet born in Michael’s lifetime). He is even reputed to have predicted his own death: Having foreseen that he would die as a result of being struck in the head by a stone of a certain weight and size, Michael is reputed to have gone about with a metal helmet under his hat. But when he removed his headpiece during Mass one day, he was struck by a falling pebble, which at first seemed not to have hurt him gravely. However, when he realized that the small stone was precisely the size and weight of the fatal stone he had foreseen, he took a turn for the worse and died of his injury. That, at least, was the popular legend. Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger) (ca. 4 B.C.E.–65 C.E.) Lucius Annaeus Seneca was an influential Roman statesman, philosopher, and playwright. He was born in what is now Córdoba, Spain, the son of Seneca the Elder, who was a respected statesman and author in his own right. The younger Seneca was educated in Rome, where he studied philosophy, rhetoric, and law. He became well known as an orator and ultimately became active in politics. In 41 C.E. probably through the machinations of his political enemy, the empress Messalina, Seneca was accused of a sexual liaison with Julia, the niece of the emperor Claudius, and exiled to the island of Corsica. On Corsica Seneca had the leisure to write and for eight years composed most of the works on which his later reputation was to rest. Messalina died in 48, and Seneca was finally allowed to return to Rome in 49 C.E. at the request of Claudius’s new wife, Agrippina. He became tutor to the empress’s son, Nero, and when the 16-year-old Nero was made

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emperor upon the death of Claudius in 54 C.E., Seneca was named one of Nero’s two chief advisers. For the early years of Nero’s reign Seneca and his fellow adviser, General Afranius Burrus, were the de facto rulers of Rome and gave the government stability for the first five years of Nero’s reign. Seneca served faithfully until Nero’s mistress, Poppaea Sabina, began to assert her influence. She seems to have been responsible for urging Nero to murder his own mother, Agrippina (59 C.E.). In 62 C.E. Nero divorced and exiled his wife, Claudia, in order to marry Poppaea. The same year Burrus died, probably by poisoning. After these events Seneca, sensing the changes in the wind, and having accumulated a large fortune while at court, retired to his villa. But in 65 C.E. Claudius was accused of conspiring against the state and ordered by the increasingly irrational Nero to commit suicide. Seneca complied by cutting his veins and died peaceably in his villa in an act admired by all Rome for its nobility. Seneca left a number of philosophical texts expressing a Stoic outlook and concerned mostly with ethics, advocating unselfishness and detachment. His best-known works are the Epistolae morales ad Lucilium (Moral essays) and the Quaestiones naturales (Philosophical analyses of natural phenomena), both addressed to his friend Lucilius the younger. The latter study was used as a textbook on science in the Middle Ages. His Dialogues are discourses on divine providence and on the peace of the soul attained through stoic management of strong emotions. Perhaps his most important philosophical text was the seven-book De benificiis, a treatise on the giving and receiving of benefits, in which he asserts that nothing is more harmful to society than ingratitude. His tragedies were ultimately more influential than his essays. They were probably written to be read aloud rather than performed and were all based on Greek originals. They comprise nine plays, including Agamemnon (based on Aeschylus), Oedipus (based on Sophocles), and Medea and Phaedra (based on Euripides). His plays were known for their onstage violence and division into five acts, two qualities that ultimately influenced Renaissance dramatists such as Thomas Kyd and John Webster.

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Siger of Brabant

Dante places Seneca among the important pagan philosophers in Limbo (INFERNO 4, l. 141) and quotes him several times in the CONVIVIO, notably his assertion that wisdom is a greater good than life itself (Convivio 3.14.8) and his denigration of wealth (Convivio 4.12.8). He also mentions Seneca as the writer of tragedies in his “Letter to Can Grande” (epistle 13), though in the Middle Ages the tragedian Seneca was thought to be distinct from Seneca the moralist (as Dante refers to him in the Inferno). Siger of Brabant (ca. 1240–ca. 1283) Siger was a brilliant philosopher and teacher at the University of Paris in the later 13th century who, through following the Arab philosopher AVERROËS in interpreting ARISTOTLE, became the center of a heated controversy between rationalist philosophers and orthodox theologians at the university, culminating in the official condemnation of 219 philosophical propositions in 1277 and the summons to appear before the inquisitor of France. Despite this controversy Dante places Siger in the heaven of the Sun, among the souls of the wise, in Canto 10 of the PARADISO. Born in the duchy of Brabant in Flanders in about 1240, Siger probably received his early education at Liège before enrolling at the University of Paris in about 1256. He began teaching the required curriculum in philosophy at the university in about 1263 or shortly thereafter. (Dante correctly identifies the street—the rue de Fouarre or “Street of Straw”—on which the university was located, leading some to speculate that Dante had attended the university for a time.) The philosophy curriculum consisted largely of Aristotle and some of the Neoplatonists, along with commentaries on them produced by leading Arabic scholars such as Averroës. Siger and some of his colleagues began to incur the enmity of friars such as SAINT BONAVENTURE and SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS in the faculty of theology when he began to teach some of Averroës’ more controversial arguments: that the world was eternal, that God knew only himself, that there was no immortality of the soul, and that the world was governed by strict laws of necessity. By 1266 the rancor over the teaching

of these propositions led Aquinas to challenge Siger and his colleague Guillaume de Saint-Amor to a public debate, specifically on the Averroist doctrine of the single active intellect that precluded individual immortality. By 1270 the controversy had grown so intense that the bishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, issued a general condemnation of several of Averroës’ positions. This proclamation seems to have had the desired effect on Siger, who maintained that the Christian faith was the highest truth, and that in teaching the opinions of the philosophers he was not necessarily asserting the legitimacy of their arguments. Indeed in two of his works published after the 1270 condemnation—On the Intellective Soul (ca. 1274) and Questions on the “Liber de Causis” (ca. 1276)—Siger seems to have backed away from any endorsement of Averroës’ view of human immortality. Some of Siger’s colleagues on the philosophy faculty were more radical, however, and made popular the infamous doctrine of the “double truth,” which held that a proposition might be true in philosophy but false theologically, while conversely a theological truth might be philosophically false. Such claims ultimately led to a more severe condemnation, and because of his reputation Siger was lumped in with the more radical members of the faculty of arts. In November 1276 Siger was summoned to appear before the inquisitor of France, Simon du Val, and in March 1277 Bishop Tempier formally condemned 219 propositions as taught by Siger and others, particularly Boethius of Dacia. By the time he was scheduled to appear before the inquisitor, however, Siger had already fled Paris and made his way to Rome, to appeal to the jurisdiction of the pope himself. This may have been successful, since there is no record of any papal condemnation of Siger. Unfortunately, however, while Siger was in papal custody at Orvieto sometime between 1281 and 1284, he was stabbed to death by a mentally disturbed clerk acting as his secretary. Many readers are surprised to find Siger in Dante’s sphere of the Sun, with orthodox figures such as BOETHIUS, ALBERTUS MAGNUS, Isidore of Seville, and the Venerable Bede. But time and

sonnet again Dante reminds his readers that God’s judgment is not necessarily man’s. In one of the great ironies of the Paradiso Dante places Siger and his earthly rival Aquinas side by side in Paradise. Sinon Sinon was the infamous Greek who, at the close of the Trojan War, persuaded the Trojans to take the wooden horse inside their city walls—the act that resulted in the destruction of their city. In Book 2 of Virgil’s AENEID (ll. 57–194) when the Greeks have apparently abandoned their 10year siege and left behind the mysterious wooden horse, the Trojans take in a captive, Sinon, the only Greek left behind, who has surrendered himself willingly. He proceeds to tell a long tale filled with lies. Sinon had incurred the wrath of ULYSSES, he claims, for vowing to avenge a kinsman whom Ulysses had killed years earlier. He goes on to claim that the Greeks had long desired to give up the war and sail for home, but the winds had prevented them until an oracle revealed that the gods demanded a human sacrifice before they could sail. Ulysses, seeing his chance for vengeance, persuaded the seer Calchas to name Sinon as the one destined to die. But Sinon says he was able to escape and hide out until the Greeks had sailed away. When asked the purpose of the wooden horse, Sinon claims that it was built as a gift to pacify the goddess Athena, who had turned against the Greeks since Ulysses and DIOMEDES had stolen from Troy the Palladium, her sacred shrine. But the new image was to be built so high that it could never be taken within Troy’s gates and protect the city as the Palladium had. Sinon urges the Trojans to thwart the Greeks by taking the horse inside, where it would so bless the Trojans that they would assail the walls of Agamemnon’s own city—or so the prophet Calchas had said. At this the Trojans’ king, Priam, adopts Sinon as one of them, and ultimately the Trojans draw the horse into their city. That night, of course, the Greek warriors hidden within the horse let themselves out, open the gates to let in the entire army, who had returned by night, and sack and burn the city. These were the results of Sinon’s false witness. Dante places Sinon in the 10th bolgia of the eighth circle of the Inferno—the Hell of the falsi-

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fiers, where, with Potiphar’s wife (of Genesis 39), he represents the falsifiers of words. Suffering the affliction of a burning fever that produces a foul stench, he languishes among the other falsifiers and engages in a vulgar exchange of insults with the counterfeiter Master ADAM (Canto 30, ll. 97–129). sonnet The sonnet, perhaps the most widespread lyric form in Western literature, had its origins in medieval Italy in the generation preceding Dante’s birth. The Italian term sonnetto means “a little sound or song,” suggesting the brevity of the 14line lyric form. In different cultures and languages the sonnet has taken different forms, most notably the Shakespearean sonnet in English (rhyming abab cdcd efef gg). But the earliest sonnets were what are now known as “Italian” or “Petrarchan” sonnets: 14 hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) lines divided, by the rhyme scheme, into an octave (or opening eightline section) and a sestet (or concluding six-line section). A skillful composer of sonnets matches form to content, so that a thematic turning point or volta occurs at the beginning of the sestet, and the eighth or ninth line of the poem becomes pivotal in the development of the poet’s argument. The first surviving sonnets were written between 1215 and 1233 by GIACOMO DA LENTINO (IACOPO DA LENTINI, “THE NOTARY”), founder of the Sicilian school of poetry. Known as “the Notary” because he served in that capacity in the court of the Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA, Giacomo was instrumental in popularizing the courtly style of the Provençal troubadours in Italy. Thus from its inception the sonnet was associated with love poetry. Giacomo’s sonnets rhymed abababab cdecde, a pattern that changed slightly at the hands of GUITTONE D’AREZZO, founder of the Tuscan school of poetry that preceded Dante’s own DOLCE STIL NOVO (sweet new style) movement. Guittone altered the form of the octave to abbaabba, the scheme that was to become standard in Italian poetry. Dante’s most immediate predecessors, GUIDO GUINIZELLI and GUIDO CAVALCANTI, wrote sonnets as well, and under their strong influence, Dante wrote a good number of love sonnets. Several of these appear in his RIME, including one addressed to Cavalcanti beginning Guido, i’ vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io (“Guido,

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I wish that you and Lapo and I”), expressing a desire that they, along with LAPO GIANNI and the poets’ three ladies, could be whisked off in a magic boat in which they would do nothing but talk of love. Some 26 sonnets appear, as well, in Dante’s VITA NUOVA. The best known of these are the first and last: In the third chapter of the Vita nuova the poet includes the sonnet beginning A ciascun’ alma presa e gentil core (“To every captive soul and loving heart”), in which in a dream he sees the god of love holding a sleeping Beatrice, to whom he feeds Dante’s burning heart. In the end, in chapter 41 of the text, the sonnet beginning Oltre la spera che più larga gira (“Beyond the sphere that makes the widest round”) describes the progress of the poet’s sigh, which travels to Heaven, glimpses Beatrice, and returns to the poet, unable to speak anything comprehensible other than the beloved lady’s name. Several of Dante’s sonnets are among his most admired minor works. The sonnet tradition continued after Dante, and it was chiefly the influence of his successor, FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) PETRARCH, that popularized the sonnet form throughout Europe, particularly in Spain, France, and England, where Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the form in the early Tudor court of Henry VIII. Sordello (ca. 1200–ca. 1270) Sordello, the most famous of the troubadour poets born in Italy, was the author of some 40 extant poems, all written in Provençal rather than Italian (for which Dante criticizes him in DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA, 1.15.2). His current fame rests chiefly not on his own poetry but on his appearance in Dante’s Comedy. Here in Cantos 6 and 7 of the PURGATORIO he offers to guide Dante and Virgil toward the gates of Purgatory but explains to them that no one can travel on the mountain at night. He therefore takes them into the Valley of Princes, where the negligent rulers such as RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG and HENRY III OF ENGLAND wait. While about a dozen of Sordello’s extant poems are love lyrics, most of the others are sirventes, or political songs. Largely on the basis on one of these, a complaint on the death of Baron Blacatz, the lord of Aups, Dante seems to have considered Sordello a representation of political integrity. Indeed in lines 97–137 of Canto 7 Dante

has Sordello echo many of the charges from this very poem in describing the negligent rulers in the Valley of the Princes. Sordello’s biography, however, suggests that he was better known for romantic intrigue than political ethics. He was born into a noble family from Goito, near the city of Mantua. In 1227 while staying in Ceneda with a family named Strasso, Sordello secretly married their daughter, Otta. When the marriage was discovered, the couple fled to Teviso, then under the authority of the notorious tyrant Ezzelino III da Romano. While under Ezzelino’s protection Sordello apparently began a secret liaison with CUNIZZA DA ROMANO, the sister of Ezzelino and wife of Count Ricciardo di San Bonifazio (Cunizza appears in Canto 9 of the PARADISO). When the affair came to light in 1229, Sordello fled Italy completely, taking refuge in the courts of Spain, Portugal, and finally Provence. Sordello’s first patron in Provence was the aforementioned Blacatz, a poet himself who patronized several other troubadours. When Blacatz died in 1236, Sordello served in the court of Raimon Bérenger IV, count of Provence. While in the count’s service he wrote his most famous poem, the lament on Blacatz’s death, which Dante seems to have admired so much. Here Sordello chides eight important European leaders, including his own lord, Count Berenger, charging them to eat the heart of Blacatz in order to gain some political courage. After 1245 he served in the retinue of CHARLES OF ANJOU. When Pope Urban IV excommunicated MANFRED, Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA’s natural son and titular king of Sicily, Charles was invited by the pope to assume sovereignty over Manfred’s realm. Sordello returned to Italy with Charles’s army, and in 1266 he served in the battle against Manfred and was taken prisoner in Naples. When the war ended, Charles remembered Sordello’s service, granting him six castles as well as estates in Abruzzi in 1269. There are no records of Sordello’s life after 1269, and he is presumed to have died shortly thereafter. How he died is unrecorded, though Dante seems to have assumed that he died a violent death: He stands aloof in Ante-Purgatory, in the area reserved for the late repentant, and Dante

Sylvester I, Pope meets him immediately after conversing with souls who suffered violent ends and repented as they lay dying. But because he is seated alone rather than moving with this earlier group, it is unclear just what Sordello is doing in this part of Ante-Purgatory, other than waiting to guide Dante and Virgil on their journey. Statius, Publius Papinus (ca. 45 C.E.–96 C.E.) Statius was the most important poet of what is called the “silver age” of Latin literature (following the “golden age” under Augustus). He is best known for his epic Thebaid, a poem modeled on Virgil’s AENEID, with 12 books of Latin dactylic hexameter verse. Presenting the story of the dispute between Oedipus’s sons Eteocles and Polynices that culminated in the war of the Seven against Thebes, the Thebaid was enormously popular in the Middle Ages and the chief source for medieval knowledge of the Theban story. Statius was born in Naples but lived most of his life in Rome, where he had access to the imperial court. His father, a Greek scholar and a minor poet in his own right, was tutor of Domitian, the younger son of Vespasian, who became emperor in 81 upon the death of his elder brother, Titus. In about 89 Statius won the prize at an annual literary competition instituted by Domitian at Alba, and in 92, having worked for a dozen years on the text of his Thebaid, he dedicated the finished poem to the emperor. Statius began a second epic, the Achilleid, but finished only the first book and a fragment of the second before he died. Still the Achilleid was a chief source of knowledge about the Greek hero ACHILLES and the early part of the Trojan War during the Middle Ages, when HOMER was not available in Western Europe. Statius also wrote the Silvae, a miscellaneous collection of 32 shorter, occasional poems in a variety of meters, published in five books. In 94 Statius failed to win the prestigious Capitoline contest in Rome, a failure he seems to have taken as a sign of his loss of favor with the emperor (who, by this time, had begun to demonstrate the despotic qualities that led to his assassination in 96). Statius’s disappointment on this occasion is recorded in one of the poems in

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his Silvae (3.5), addressed to his wife. He retired to Naples after that loss and died there in 96 C.E. Dante introduces Statius in Canto 21 of his PURGATORIO, after the Roman poet has completed the purgation of his soul. The shade of Statius accompanies Dante and Virgil to the top of Mount Purgatory. For this to occur, of course, Dante must present Statius as a Christian. There is no evidence or known source for Dante’s assertion in Purgatorio 22, ll. 88–91 that Statius secretly became a Christian before he completed the Thebaid (given Domitian’s persecution of Christians and Jews, it seems an unlikely step for the poet), but for his own poetic purposes Dante invents the fiction. Since little was known about Statius’s life (especially since the occasionally autobiographical poems of the Silvae were not rediscovered until the 15th century), Dante could embellish Statius’s biography without running up against inconvenient historical facts. Dante also inadvertently mistakes Statius’s birthplace, repeating the common medieval confusion of the poet Statius with the rhetorician Lucius Statius Ursulus, born in Toulouse during the reign of Nero (ca. 58 C.E.). Statius’s actual birth in Naples is one of those autobiographical details alluded to in the Silvae. Sylvester I, Pope (fl. 314–335 C.E.) Pope Sylvester was known to the Middle Ages as the pope who converted the Roman Emperor CONSTANTINE to Christianity, although modern historians give no credence to that legend. Very few facts are known concerning the historical Sylvester. The fourthcentury Liberian Catalogue gives us Sylvester’s dates of service as what was at that time simply the bishop of Rome and mentions the several churches in Rome that were commissioned by the emperor during Sylvester’s pontificate, including the basilica and baptistery of the Lateran, the basilica of Santa Croce, the Church of Saint Peter, and a number of churches erected over the graves of martyrs in the Roman cemeteries. Thus it is likely that the first record of Roman martyrs was composed during Sylvester’s tenure. According to his legend, however, which was accepted as historical by Dante and his contemporaries, Sylvester had a far more active role in

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Constantine’s embrace of Christianity. The legend states that Constantine had been cursed with leprosy as a result of his persecution of Christians, and that his pagan advisers asserted that in order to be cured, he must bathe himself in the blood of 3,000 infant children. Unwilling to be responsible for the slaughter of so many innocent children, the emperor rejected the proposal, determining to die rather than commit such an outrage. That evening SAINT PETER and Saint Paul appeared to Constantine in a dream, urging him to send for Pope Sylvester at Mount Soracte, where the pope was hiding from the emperor’s persecution. Constantine did so, and Sylvester subsequently washed the emperor in the holy water of baptism, which immediately washed away Constantine’s leprosy. Constantine went on to convert the entire empire to what he now saw was the true faith and in gratitude gave over to the pope’s

control the city of Rome and the entire western half of the Roman Empire, retiring to Constantinople to rule Byzantium. There was even a forged eighthcentury document in existence that purported to be the legal record of Constantine’s gift. Dante never questioned the authenticity of this Donation of Constantine, but he did question its legitimacy. In DE MONARCHIA (3.10) he challenges Constantine’s legal right to make such a donation, and Sylvester’s legal authority to accept it. Dante deplored the secular power that this supposed donation gave to the papacy and saw it as the root of all the political troubles in Italy. In the heavenly pageant that he depicts in the Earthly Paradise in Canto 32 of the PURGATORIO (ll. 124–129), the eagle feathers that overburden the chariot of the church represent the inappropriate wealth gained through Constantine’s donation.

T Taddeo d’Alderotto of Bologna (ca. 1235– 1295) Taddeo d’Alderotto was a famous Italian physician. He is believed to have founded the school of medicine at the University of Bologna. His written works include commentaries on Hippocrates and Galen, as well as a translation of ARISTOTLE’s Ethics. Dante scorns this translation in the CONVIVIO (1.10.10), calling the author Thaddeus the Hippocratist. There is at least one anecdote, recorded in the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, that depicts Taddeo charging outrageous fees for his services as a physician. Dante seems to have been aware of this reputation when he mentions Taddeo again in Canto 12 of the PARADISO. In this scene the pilgrim is in the sphere of the Sun among the souls of the wise. Here SAINT BONAVENTURE, a Franciscan friar, is making a speech in which he praises SAINT DOMINIC (as the Dominican SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS had praised SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI in the previous canto). Bonaventure says that Dominic is a true servant of Christ, unlike those who are motivated by worldly gain such as Taddeo.

tazzi family of Bologna, who had taken refuge in Faenza in 1274 after being exiled from Bologna, Tebaldello opened the gates of Faenza to the Lambertazzi’s GUELPH enemies (the Geremei of Bologna). The Lambertazzi were crushed and many of them slaughtered as a result of Tebaldello’s action— reportedly committed because of a dispute with the Lambertazzi over the ownership of a couple of pigs. Tebaldello’s name immediately became synonymous with villainy throughout Romagna and memorialized in a contemporary vernacular poem referring to the steep price paid for Tebaldello’s pigs. The pilgrim Dante encounters Tebaldello in the icy region of Antenora, the second zone of the ninth circle of Hell, in Canto 32 of the INFERNO. The poet says that this region, where traitors to their cities and political parties are punished, is so utterly horrible that he does not have words to describe it accurately. Tebaldello is identified to the pilgrim by the shade of an angry Bocca degli Abati, after the pilgrim has tried to coerce Bocca into identifying himself by indignantly pulling his hair. Along with Tebaldello and Bocca Antenora holds the shades of Tesauro dei Beccheria, Gianni de’ Soldanier, GANELON, and Tibbald—all suffering in Hell for betraying their country or their party.

Stephanie Fritts Tebaldello dei Zambrasi (Tribaldello) (d. ca. 1382) On the morning of November 13, 1280, Tebaldello of Faenza, a member of the GHIBELLINE Zambrasi family, committed an act that would make his name synonymous with villainy: In order to avenge himself against the Ghibelline Lamber-

Stephanie Fritts Tegghiaio Aldobrandi (d. ca. 1265) Tegghiaio Aldobrandi was a prominent Florentine GUELPH knight of the generation that preceded Dante’s 519

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birth. He was a member of the influential degli Adimari family, a nobleman who in 1256 was podestà (mayor) of AREZZO after the GHIBELLINEs had been driven from that city in 1255. Tegghiaio was described by commentators as a wise and valiant knight whose authority was well respected. Indeed it was Tegghiaio who in 1260 acted as spokesman for a group of Florentine nobles led by GUIDO GUERRA that opposed the Florentine campaign against Siena that year. Failing to heed Tegghiaio’s warning, the Florentines engaged in the expedition and were destroyed by the Ghibellines at the bloody Battle of Montaperti. Tegghiaio survived that battle and, with other Florentine Guelphs, went into exile in the city of Lucca. He died shortly before the Guelphs retook FLORENCE in 1266. In Canto 6 of the INFERNO the pilgrim Dante asks CIACCO the hog about Tegghiaio and his friend and neighbor JACOPO RUSTICUCCI, only to be told that they are among the blackest sinners in Hell. Dante meets Tegghiaio, along with Jacopo and Guido Guerra, among the sodomites in the circle of the violent in Canto 16. Here Jacopo says that Florence would have done well to have listened to Tegghiaio’s wise words, doubtlessly referring to the knight’s warning to abandon the Sienese campaign. It should be noted that in Tegghiaio’s case Dante is the only source extant for the charge of sodomy against him. Whether Dante had learned of Tegghiaio’s proclivity from some secret source, or whether the poet had invented the charge to suit his own purposes, is unknown. terza rima A three-line verse form specifically invented by Dante for the Divine Comedy, terza rima symbolized for the poet the Holy Trinity and reflected in miniature the three-part structure of the entire long poem. The form uses three-line stanzas (or tercets) in interlocking 11-syllable (or hendecasyllabic) lines that rhyme aba bcb cdc ded, and so on, so that the middle line of one tercet rhymes with the first and third lines of the following tercet. For example, the first nine lines of Dante’s PURGATORIO rhyme in this way: Per corer miglior acque alza le vele omai la navicella del mio ingegno,

che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele; e canterò di quell secondo regno dove l’umano spirito si purga e di salire al ciel diventa degno. Ma qui la morta poesì resurge, o sante Muse, poi che vostro sono; e qui Calïopè alquanto surga, To course over better waters the little bark of my genius now hoists her sails, leaving behind her a sea so cruel; and I will sing of that second realm where the human spirit is purged and becomes fit to ascend to Heaven. But here let dead poetry rise again, O holy Muses, since I am yours; and here let Calliope rise up somewhat. (Singleton, 2.2–3)

A series like this could go on forever. Dante ends each series by placing a single line, rhyming with the second line of the preceding tercet, as the conclusion of each of his cantos. It has been suggested that the verse form, with its continuing pattern, reflects the long journey taken by Dante the pilgrim. Others have suggested that the interlocking stanzas reflect the interdependence of all God’s creation. Throughout his COMEDY Dante is concerned with interweaving form and content. His use of terza rima accomplished this goal admirably. Thaïs Thaïs is the name of a courtesan who appears briefly in Canto 18 of the INFERNO (ll. 133–135). Here in circle eight, bolgia two (the bolgia of the flatterers), Thaïs is depicted as immersed in a sea of excrement along with the other flatterers. According to the story as Dante presents it, when asked whether she was pleased with one of her lover’s gifts, Thaïs gave the exaggerated (and therefore flattering) response, “Very, no, extremely so.” There were in fact two famous historical courtesans named Thaïs with whose stories Dante would have been acquainted: One was an Athenian mistress of ALEXANDER THE GREAT who reportedly persuaded Alexander to burn the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis. The other was a sixth-century Egyptian courtesan who was converted by Saint Paphnutius and spent three years enclosed in a

Thomas Aquinas, Saint cell as penance before moving on to a convent and sainthood. Neither of these, however, is the courtesan in Dante’s text. His Thaïs is a character from the play Eunuchus by the Roman comic writer Terence. Dante places her in Hell as if she is a historical personage. In the play a lover named Thraso sends his servant Gnatho with a slave as a gift to Thaïs. When the lover asks Gnatho whether Thaïs considered the gift worthy of her gratitude, the servant, exaggerating her response, replies, “Very, no, incredibly so.” Since Dante puts the answer into the mouth of the courtesan instead of the servant, it is unlikely that he was familiar with Terence’s play, and most scholars believe Dante took the story from MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO’s De amicitia. Cicero, as does Dante, discusses the scene as an example of the most unconscionable flattery, though from his summary it may have been difficult for Dante to understand that Gnatho, not Thaïs, had spoken the line. Theseus Theseus is a Greek legendary hero. The son of the Athenian king Aegeas and Aethra, the daughter of King Pittheus of Troezen, Theseus later became king of Athens himself. He volunteered as a youth to be one of the seven men and seven women Athens sent as an annual sacrifice to the Minotaur of Crete (a monster half-bull and halfman, conceived through the lust of Cretan queen Pasiphaë, who hid in a wooden cow to entice a bull on which she doted). With the help of the monster’s half sister Ariadne, who gave Theseus a sword and the secret to escaping the labyrinth in which the monster was held, Theseus killed the Minotaur and earned the love of Ariadne, whom he took away from Crete then abandoned on the island of Naxos. In other adventures after Theseus helped Pirithous, king of the Lapithae, defeat the Centaurs, the two heroes attempted to free Proserpina (abducted by Pluto, lord of the Hades) from the world of the dead, but the effort failed. Pirithous was killed, and Theseus found himself a prisoner. According to Virgil and PUBLIUS STATIUS PAPINUS, Theseus was trapped in Hades eternally. But Dante

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uses a lesser-known version of the hero’s story in which Hercules saves Theseus from Hell. In some legends Theseus was one of the Argonauts who sailed with JASON for the Golden Fleece. In others he marries Phaedra, who accuses Hippolytus (Theseus’s son from a previous liaison) of raping her when he refuses her advances and convinces Theseus to curse Hippolytus, who is subsequently killed by his own horses. In other stories after Theseus becomes king of Athens, he gives refuge to the exiled Oedipus at Kolonus and also helps to bury the exposed bodies of the Seven against Thebes. According to another legend his people denied him power when he returned to Athens after his quests and rescue from the underworld, and he was ultimately slain on the island of Scyros, thrown from a cliff by King Lycodemes, who feared Theseus would dethrone him. In Canto 9 of the INFERNO at the gates of Dis the demons threaten Dante the pilgrim, saying “how wrong we were to let off Theseus lightly” (l. 54). Here Dante references Theseus’s journey into the lower world and his escape with the aid of Hercules. In Inferno 12 (ll. 12–21) Virgil taunts the Minotaur—“the infamy of Crete,” as Dante calls it (l. 12)—who guards the circle of violence. He reminds it of its defeat at the hands of Ariadne and Theseus, whom he calls the “Duke of Athens,” in reference to his status as heir to the throne of Aegeas. Later in PURGATORIO 24 (ll. 121–123) Dante mentions Theseus’s battle with the Centaurs, who became drunk and tried to kidnap the bride at the wedding feast of Pirithous and Hippodamia: This is cited as an example of drunkenness, a branch of the vice of gluttony. Stacey M. Jones Thomas Aquinas, Saint (ca. 1224–1274) Thomas Aquinas was the most influential of the Scholastic philosophers and was the chief source for many of Dante’s theological opinions as expressed in the COMEDY. A Dominican associated with the University of Paris, Aquinas made his greatest contribution was certainly with his Summa theologica, in which he strove to reconcile Christian faith with Aristotelian philosophy.

522 Trajan Saint Thomas was born in Aquino in Sicily, where his noble family had ties to the court of the Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA. Thomas attended the Benedictine school at Monte Cassino in 1231 and in 1239 moved on to study at the University of Naples, where he probably became acquainted with translations of ARISTOTLE and of his Muslim and Jewish commentators, such as AVERROËS and Maimonides. Having become a Dominican in 1242, Thomas subsequently left Sicily to study at the University of Paris with the great Christian Aristotelian ALBERTUS MAGNUS. He taught with Albert in Cologne in 1248, became a priest in 1250, and returned in 1252 to lecture at Paris, where he wrote a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, applying Aristotelian logic to theological questions. In 1259 he completed his Summa contra Gentiles, a text designed to help Dominican missionaries in their attempts to convert Jews and Muslims. That year he was sent to teach in Italy, where he wrote a number of texts, including his monumental Summa theologica. Back in Paris in 1268 Aquinas became embroiled in the controversy with SIGER OF BRABANT over the teachings of Averroës (from whom Parisian philosophers had taken the theory that there is no individual afterlife, and the doctrine of the “double truth”—the idea that both Christian doctrine and philosophy can be true, even if they contradict one another). Finally in 1272 Aquinas was back in Naples, where he worked on the third part of his Summa theologica. Summoned to the Council of Lyons in 1274, the ailing Thomas died en route. A rumor of the time, that he was poisoned by CHARLES OF ANJOU, Dante seems to have taken seriously, alluding to it in Purgatorio 20, 1. 69. Thomas was canonized in 1323, two years after Dante’s death. Dante places Aquinas among the doctors of the church in the Heaven of the Sun in Paradise. He is one of the chief spokesmen of this sphere, introducing the pilgrim Dante to the lights of the other intellectual souls who form his circle, including his own teacher Albertus Magnus in 1.98 as well as his bitter rival Siger of Brabant in ll. 136–138—an ironic gesture that suggests the reconciliation of all disputes in Heaven. In the next chapter Thomas

tells the pilgrim about the two “princes of the church” ordained by God to guide the Bride of Christ—by which he means the founders of the two mendicant orders, SAINT DOMINIC and SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. He then proceeds to tell the life story of Saint Francis, a compliment to the Franciscan rivals of his own Dominican order, which he denounces at the end of the canto as corrupt and fallen from Dominic’s original ideal. While Dante seems to have been familiar with Thomas’s opinions, he does not quote him anywhere in the COMEDY. He does quote Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics in the CONVIVIO 2.14.14 and 4.8.1 and quotes the Summa contra Gentiles in Convivio 4.15.12 and in De monarchia 2.4.1. Further the fact that Aquinas’s speech is one of the longest in the Comedy is a clear indication of the respect with which Dante regarded the famous Dominican. Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Trajanus) (51–117 C.E.) Trajan was one of the most admired of the Roman emperors in the late classical and medieval periods. In his reign he enjoyed the title of optimus princes, “the best of princes.” Much of his medieval popularity, however, sprang from legends about him that are probably apocryphal. Dante admired him greatly and uses him as an example of humility on the terrace of pride in the PURGATORIO, while placing him among the most exalted of the souls of the just rulers in the PARADISO’s sphere of Jupiter. The historical Trajan was born in the town of Italica in southern Spain in 51 C.E. He spent his early years as a successful military officer in Syria and in Domitian’s wars in Germany before serving a term as consul in 91. Subsequently he was appointed governor of Germania, headquartered at Mainz, where in 97 word was taken to him that the emperor Nerva, who had no legitimate heirs, had adopted the 40-year-old Trajan in order to solidify his own imperial position. Nerva died in 98, while Trajan was serving a second term as consul, and the imperial title passed peacefully to Trajan. Trajan established good relationships with the Senate, in contrast with Domitian’s more adversarial policy. His experience in the military and respect for the legions made him popular with the

Tuscany army as well. He fought a major war against the Dacians in Germania in 101 and again in 106, establishing the first Roman province north of the Danube. He also added the province of Arabia and after three campaigns annexed the kingdom of Parthia, expanding the empire to its largest physical extent. The rich mines of Dacia produced great wealth for Rome and enabled Trajan to initiate an ambitious building program throughout the empire, particularly in Rome itself. Most famous was the great column of Trajan in the Forum: Designed by Apollodorus, it was 100 feet high and carved with reliefs in 23 spiral bands, depicting Trajan’s Dacian wars. The column was intended as his mausoleum, and indeed his ashes were buried under it after he died when returning home from his last Parthian campaign. It may have been Trajan’s refusal to persecute Christians actively that contributed to his medieval popularity. In the COMEDY Dante uses a legend of Trajan as one of the examples of humility in Purgatorio 10, ll. 73–96. According to this story as he set out for the wars at the head of his legions, Trajan was accosted by a poor widow demanding justice on the murderers of her son. The emperor attempted to put her off, saying he would help her when he returned, or, if he failed to return, his successor would help. The widow changed Trajan’s mind by contending that it would be no credit to him if his successor did the right thing: He must fulfill his own obligations. At this Trajan dismounted, satisfied the widow’s demands by effecting justice for the murders, and remounted to lead his army into battle. According to medieval tradition GREGORY THE GREAT (POPE GREGORY I), having crossed through Trajan’s Forum in Rome and viewed the carvings on his pillar, went into the Basilica of SAINT PETER and prayed for the soul of Trajan. The story declares that God granted Gregory’s prayer, allowing Trajan’s soul to leave Limbo and reunite with his living body so that Gregory could convince him of the truth of the Gospel and baptize him. Thus as Dante presents the story in Canto 20 of the Paradiso, Trajan died a Christian and now knows the true value of Christian faith (ll. 44–47, 106–117).

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Tuscany Tuscany is the traditional name for the region of North-Central Italy that includes Dante’s home city of FLORENCE as its chief metropolis. The region is shaped like a triangle, bordered on the west by the Tyrrhenian Sea, on the north by the Apennines and by Emilia-Romagna, and on the southeast by Umbria and Latium. The region is hilly, with fertile land along the ARNO River and along the coastal area known as Maremma. In ancient times Tuscany formed the main part of the Etruscan civilization. It was conquered by the Romans in the fourth century B.C.E. After the fall of Rome Tuscany became a marquisate and an imperial fief under the Frankish emperors until the time of the countess Matilda, a major supporter of Pope Gregory VII in his struggle with Emperor Henry IV. Upon her death in 1115 Matilda bequeathed all her lands to the church, and in subsequent generations the region of Tuscany became disputed territory between the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. In the course of this unresolved dispute the major cities of Tuscany—including Florence, PISA, Siena, AREZZO, Lucca, and Pistoia—gradually assumed independent status and became republics. In Dante’s time these cities were embroiled in bitter and violent struggles, mainly involving GUELPH Florence and its allies, Pistoia, Siena, and Lucca, at war with GHIBELLINE cities of Pisa and Arezzo. Ultimately the Guelphs themselves split into White (BIANCHI) and Black (NERI) factions, increasing the instability in Florence and in Pistoia and causing Dante’s exile from his home city in 1302. Despite its turbulence medieval Tuscany was a center for learning and the arts, with independent schools of painting, sculpture, and architecture developing in Pisa, Siena, Arezzo, and Florence. GIOVANNI (CENNI DE PEPO) CIMABUE and GIOTTO DI BONDONE were Tuscan painters, and GUITTONE D’AREZZO established the first school of vernacular poetry in Italy outside the Imperial court in the mid13th century. Ultimately Florence was to become the cradle of the Renaissance, and the Tuscan dialect, as practiced by Dante, FRANCESCO (FRANCIS) PETRARCH, and GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO, would become the standard literary language of Italy.

524 Tuscany When Dante himself speaks of the Tuscan dialect in Chapter 1, Section 10, of DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA, he finds it just as inadequate as the other dialects of Italian and advocates an illustrious literary vernacular that transcends all spoken dialects. Dante mentions Tuscany often, but he speaks of it

at greatest length in Canto 14 of the PURGATORIO, where he portrays GUIDO DEL DUCA on the terrace of envy, bitterly condemning all of the inhabitants of all the Tuscan areas touched by the Arno (the Casentino Valley, Arezzo, Florence, and Pisa) as brutes because of their incessant feuding.

U Ugolino della Gherardesca (ca. 1220–1289) Also known as Ugolino da Pisa, the count of Donoratico, Ugolino was born in about 1220 to a noble and traditionally GHIBELLINE family of PISA called the Gherardesca. The family owned valuable farmland in the Maremma region near Pisa and controlled a good deal of territory in Sardinia as well. Ugolino’s first public office was as vicar for King Enzo of Sardinia, though the latter was in prison in Bologna at the time and had no real power. In a squabble over Enzo’s rights in Sardinia Ugolino formed an alliance with Giovanni Visconti, leader of the Pisan GUELPHs, who had married Ugolino’s daughter. In 1275 the Ghibelline Ugolino conspired with the Guelph Visconti to take control of Pisa, a traditionally Ghibelline city. But the plot was revealed and Ugolino sent into exile, his property confiscated by the state. Within a few years, however, he returned and was able to restore himself to prominence in the city. When the naval forces of Pisa were defeated soundly by Guelph Genoa in the Battle of Meloria in 1284, and Ghibelline Pisa found itself facing hostile Guelph cities on all sides—most particularly Genoa, Lucca, and FLORENCE—the city appointed Ugolino its chief magistrate, on the assumption that with his Guelph ties, he might be able to negotiate a peaceful end to hostilities. Ugolino’s most controversial act as podestà was, in spring and summer 1285, to cede three of Pisa’s castles to Lucca and Florence, presumably to ensure their neutrality in the war between Genoa and Pisa.

In that same year Ugolino’s grandson, the young judge NINO (UGOLINO) VISCONTI, was gaining in influence in the city and was seen by many as the man to replace his late father, Giovanni, as leader of the Pisan Guelphs. Another faction of Guelphs supported Ugolino, however, and together they controlled the city until their rivalry became more heated and they agreed to resign their public offices for the good of the city. Neither Ugolino nor Nino, however, was willing to forgo his ambitions, and they set aside their differences in February 1288 and conspired to regain control of Pisa. In March Ugolino deliberately fomented riots in the city, and in the ensuing unrest, he and Nino seized power with an armed militia. As soon as Ugolino was restored to power, he began to search for a way to drive Nino from office. In June foreseeing a resurgence of Ghibelline influence in Pisa, Ugolino conspired with Archbishop RUGGIERI DEGLI UBALDINI DELLA PILA and several prominent Pisan Ghibelline families to drive Nino into exile and take sole control of the city. In order to avoid suspicion, Ugolino left Pisa for his country estate, Settimo. When Nino realized that Ugolino had conspired with the Ghibellines, he fled the city to his own castle at Calci. Nino subsequently allied himself with Lucca and Florence against Pisa and in Florence became a friend of Dante’s. With Count Ugolino out of Pisa, Ruggieri was de facto governor of the city, and when Ugolino returned, Ruggieri betrayed his former partner. Charging the count with treason in the matter of 525

526 Uguccione della Faggiuola the three castles he had ceded to Pisa’s enemies three years earlier, Ruggieri imprisoned Ugolino in a tower along with two of his sons and two grandsons. After six months Ruggieri allegedly ordered the tower sealed up, and Ugolino and his family were allowed to starve to death early in 1289. The tower thereafter became known as the Tower of Hunger. Dante places Ugolino in the ninth circle of Hell and depicts him frozen in the ice of Antenora (the circle of those who betrayed their country or party). In Canto 32 of the INFERNO Dante and Virgil come upon Ugolino, frozen together with Ruggieri, gnawing on the head of the archbishop’s shade. In Canto 33 the count tells Dante the story of his last days and the death by starvation of his four “sons” before he, too, succumbed to hunger. The tale is one of the most poignant and moving of the entire COMEDY, though of course it deals with events of which only the historical Ugolino and his family could have known. The story reveals nothing about the sins for which Ugolino is damned, for the motive of Dante’s character is to avenge himself on Ruggieri by blackening his name—a fictional goal that has been successfully achieved for seven centuries. Uguccione della Faggiuola (1250–1320) A prominent leader of the GHIBELLINE party, Uguccione della Faggiuola held several administrative positions during his lifetime: podestà (chief magistrate) of AREZZO, Gubbio, and PISA and capitano del popolo (captain general) of Cesena and Pisa. Uguccione’s support of HENRY VII OF LUXEMBOURG led Henry to appoint him the ruler of Pisa. Later Uguccione defeated the GUELPHs at the Battle of Montecatini in 1315 and subsequently served CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA, Dante’s patron and the ruler of VERONA. Uguccione was the father-in-law of the Florentine Black Guelph CORSO DONATI, who was one of those most responsible for Dante’s exile from FLORENCE in 1302. Despite his hatred for Corso, Dante apparently admired and respected Uguccione. According to one legend (endorsed by GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO), Dante dedicated the INFERNO to Uguccione because he provided the poet with shelter—one of Uguccione’s castles—early on during the poet’s exile. It has even been suggested by one 19th-century critic, Carlo Troya, that Uguccione is

himself the greyhound described by Virgil, destined to destroy the avaricious she-wolf and restore order to Italy (Inferno 1, 1.101)—a theory that most critics dispute, largely because of Ugguccione’s reputation as a tyrannical and avaricious ruler. Stephanie Fritts Ulysses (Odysseus) Ulysses, the Latin form of the Greek Odysseus, is the hero of HOMER’s Odyssey and one of the greatest Greek heroes in the legendary Trojan War. Tradition says that he was the king of the island of Ithaca, the son of Laertes, husband to the faithful Penelope, and father of Telemachus. Dante places Ulysses in the eighth bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell, among the “evil counselors” (Canto 26), along with his compatriot DIOMEDES, with whom he hatched several schemes associated with the conduct of the Trojan War. Dante lists three of these stratagems as reasons for Ulysses’ damnation. One of these is the theft of the Palladium. The Palladium was a five-foot wooden statue of the goddess Pallas Athena, supposed to have been given to Ilus, founder of Troy, by the hand of Jupiter himself. As long as the statue remained within the citadel of Troy, so legend had it, the city would always be safe and prosperous. Ulysses and Diomedes managed to steal the statue and carry it off to Argos, thereby enabling the Greeks to take the city. Dante also charges Ulysses with causing Deïdamia to grieve. Here the poet is referring to the story of ACHILLES: Knowing that Achilles must die if he joined the war on Troy, the youth’s mother, Thetis, disguised him as a girl and hid him away on the island of Scyros with King Lycomedes. Here Achilles fathered a child with Lycomedes’ daughter, Deïdamia. But Ulysses managed to penetrate Achilles’ disguise by presenting gifts to the king’s daughters, among which were secreted a lance and shield. When Achilles showed more interest in the weapons than in the women’s items, Ulysses recognized him as a man, and he persuaded him to abandon Deïdamia and their child and join the Greek assault on Troy. Finally, Ulysses is damned as the supposed originator of the device of the wooden horse, by means of which the Greeks were finally able to destroy Troy.

Ulysses By Ulysses’ design the Greeks pretended to abandon the siege of the city, leaving behind the huge, hollow wooden horse (filled with Greek warriors), supposedly as an offering to Athena. The Trojans, convinced by the devious SINON and believing that the horse was a symbol of the Greeks’ capitulation, drew the horse inside the city walls and celebrated their deliverance. That night the warriors emerged from the horse and opened the city gates, letting in the entire Greek army, who sacked and burned the city, slaughtering the men and enslaving the women. Only Aeneas and his companions, who (as told in Virgil’s AENEID) would found the Roman nation on the shores of Italy, were able to escape. According to Homer after Troy’s destruction Ulysses wandered about the known world for some 10 years—encountering monsters like the Cyclops and enchantresses Circe and traveling even to the land of the dead to speak with the seer Tiresias— before he was able to return home, where he and Telemachus had first to defeat a horde of unwelcome suitors before he could reclaim his wife and his lands and be reunited with his beloved father. But Dante had no direct knowledge of the Odyssey and was unfamiliar with much of Ulysses’ story as Homer told it. In Homer Tiresias tells Ulysses that he will find a peaceful death from the sea. In Dictys Cretensis’s Latin prose Ephemeris belli Toiani

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(which Dante would have known), Ulysses is killed by Telegonus, his own son by the witch Circe. But Dante relies on none of these traditions for his portrayal of Ulysses’ final voyage in the INFERNO. There is no known source for Ulysses’ account of his last voyage in Dante’s Canto 26, and it is generally believed that Dante invented the story, though some scholars believe that it was inspired by two Genoese brothers named Vivaldi who in 1291 sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules (i.e., Gibraltar) to search for a sea route to India and were never heard from again. In Dante’s version Ulysses leaves Circe’s island with a burning desire to explore all the world and to learn all that is good and evil in human beings. He sails his ship past the Pillars of Hercules, beyond which men were warned not to travel, exhorting his men to sail on to achieve virtue and knowledge. After five months of sailing uncharted waters the crew members see Mount Purgatory, but they are unable to land on its shore as a storm sinks the ship, drowning them all. Ulysses’ monologue is one of the most highly admired sections of the Inferno, best known, perhaps, for inspiring Tennyson’s famous poem “Ulysses.” Whether Dante intended for Ulysses’ voyage to be seen as inspirational or foolhardy is a matter of some question.

V Verona Verona is a northern Italian city in the province of Venetia. Dante visited Verona twice during his exile, first as the guest of Bartolomeo della Scala in 1303–04, and later as the guest of Bartolomeo’s younger brother, the great GHIBELLINE captain CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA, from 1312 to 1318. Can Grande in particular seems to have patronized Dante’s literary efforts. Dante was quite grateful to the della Scala family, praising Bartolomeo as the “great Lombard” in PARADISO 17, l. 71 and, more significantly, dedicating the Paradiso to Can Grande in his 13th Latin epistle. The tombs of the della Scala family, who ruled the city for more than a century beginning in 1259, can still be viewed in Verona to this day. Dante makes a number of references to the city in his works. In DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA Dante criticizes the Veronese dialect for its harsh sound. In Canto 15 of the INFERNO Dante mentions the city’s annual palio, or footrace, in connection with BRUNETTO LATINI, whom the pilgrim encounters among the sodomites in the seventh circle of Hell. After a conversation in which Brunetto predicts trouble ahead for Dante in FLORENCE, he runs off to rejoin his group and appears to the pilgrim as if he were the winner of the palio. Finally, in Canto 18 of the PURGATORIO Gherardo, an abbot of the San Zeno monastery in Verona, predicts the imminent death of Alberto del Scala, the father of Dante’s patrons Bartolomeo and Can Grande. In his prophecy Gherardo predicts future suffering for Alberto, because he

left the monastery under the charge of his incompetent and corrupt son, Giuseppe. Stephanie Fritts Vexilla regis prodeunt These words form the opening line of a popular hymn familiar to Dante and his contemporary readers. The Latin words, which may be translated “The banners of the king advance,” are quoted by Virgil at the beginning of Canto 34 of the INFERNO, but Virgil ironically adds the word inferni (of Hell), so that his pronouncement means “The banners of the king of Hell advance.” He is alluding to the fact that within a few more lines the poets will come face to face with Satan himself. The original hymn was written by the early Christian composer Venantius Fortunatus (ca. 530–610), the bishop of Poitiers in the late sixth century. Fortunatus had written the hymn to celebrate the arrival in Poitiers of a relic reputed to be a piece of the “true cross” on November 19, 569. In Dante’s time the hymn was traditionally used as a part of the Good Friday service, where it was sung just prior to the unveiling of the cross. The hymn is appropriate for Dante’s journey through Hell, which began on the evening of Good Friday, and the reader would associate the words with the cross that symbolized the redeeming sacrifice of Christ. But Virgil’s ironic addition of the qualifier “of Hell” has the effect of directly contrasting Christ and his sacrificial love with Satan and his cruel malice. The opening lines of Canto 34 thus 528

Visconti, Nino establish an ironic tone for the canto and anticipate Dante’s later depiction of Satan’s three faces, which parody the three persons of the Trinity. Visconti, Nino (Ugolino) (ca. 1264–1296) A prominent Pisan GUELPH, Nino Visconti was a judge (i.e., chief magistrate) of the Sardinian province of Galuria and, from 1285 until 1288, was podestà of PISA, an office he shared with his grandfather, Count UGOLINO DELLA GHERARDESCA. When Ugolino conspired with Archbishop RUGGIERI DEGLI UBALDINI DELLA PILA to join the GHIBELLINE side, he betrayed Nino and forced him to flee the city. Dante places Ugolino in the circle of traitors called Antenora in the lowest depths of Hell (INFERNO, Canto 33). Nino’s father was Giovanni Visconti, and his mother was Ugolino’s daughter, who named her son Ugolino after her father (Nino is a nickname for Ugolino). Nino was made judge of Galuria in his 20s and became a popular leader of the Pisan Guelphs, sharing power with his grandfather from 1285. Friction developed between Nino and the count, leading to Ugolino’s treachery and Nino’s exile in 1288. At that point Nino fled to the Guelph city of Lucca. For the next five years Nino was one of the leaders of the Guelph forces of Lucca, Genoa, and FLORENCE, making war on the Ghibelline government of Pisa. He apparently took part in the BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO in June 1289, in which the Florentine Guelphs soundly defeated the Ghibellines of AREZZO. This was a battle in which Dante also fought, and it is known that Nino often visited Florence between 1288 and 1293. Dante would

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have had a number of opportunities to meet Nino during this time, and in Canto 8 of the PURGATORIO he depicts a warm greeting between Nino and the pilgrim Dante in the Valley of Princes, implying that the two had been friends. In 1293 Nino was made captain of the Guelph alliance, and after peace was finally concluded with Pisa, he settled in Genoa, where he became a citizen. Shortly thereafter he returned to his judgeship in Sardinia. It was during this time that Nino, returning to Galuria, found that his deputy there, FRA GOMITA OF GALLURA, had taken bribes to allow prisoners to escape. Nino had Gomita summarily hanged. Gomita is mentioned in Canto 22 of the INFERNO (ll. 81–97), where Dante has placed him in the bolgia of the grafters. Nino died in Sardinia in 1296. According to his dying wish, his heart was taken to Lucca, where it was interred in the Church of San Francesco. His widow, Beatrice d’Este, was the sister of Azzo VIII d’Este (Azzo was the infamous tyrant who had ordered the death of JACOPO DEL CASSERO OF FANO—see PURGATORIO 5, ll. 77–78). In Purgatorio 8 Nino complains that Beatrice has given up her mourning garments, first to be betrothed to Alberto Scotti, lord of Piacenza, and then breaking off her engagement to him and marrying Galeazzo Visconti of Milan (a political marriage probably arranged by her brother). Nino prophesies to Dante that Beatrice will have cause to regret her marriage— Galeazzo would be exiled from Milan in 1302 and eventually would die in poverty. Nino’s daughter with Beatrice, the young GIOVANNA, Nino says is innocent, and he wants Dante to ask her to pray for her father in Purgatory (Purgatorio 8, ll. 70–81).

W William VII (Longsword) (d. 1292) Guglielmo or William VII, called Spadalunga or “Longsword,” was the marquis of Montferrat, a region in the Piedmont in northwestern Italy, south of the Po River. Dante places William among the negligent rulers in the Valley of Princes in Canto 7 of the PURGATORIO. The poet SORDELLO says of him that his war with Alessandria has made “all Montferrat and Canavese weep” (l. 136). That war, disastrous for his homeland, was actually waged by William’s son, and successor Giovanni I, in an attempt to avenge William’s death. William was the son of Boniface III, who had been marquis of Montferrat from 1225 to 1254. Soon after his ascension to power William married Isabella, the daughter of the English earl Richard of Gloucester. They had two daughters: Isabella, whom he married in 1271 to the son of Alfonso X, king of Castile, and Iolanthe (called Irene), whom he married in 1284 to the emperor of Constantinople, Andronicus Paleologus II. Meanwhile William was able to subjugate a number of Lombard cities that were weakened by their own internal squabbling. In 1264 William allied himself with CHARLES OF ANJOU, who at the invitation of Pope Urban IV was planning an invasion of Italy to conquer the Kingdom of Sicily, then under the rule of the pope’s enemy, MANFRED. Later, however, he fell out with Charles over the latter’s plans to subdue Lombardy, William’s own territory. In 1271 William married a second wife—Beatrice,

daughter of Castile’s Alfonso X (and thus his own daughter’s sister-in-law). His son, Giovanni, was born of this union. By 1281 William was made Imperial vicar of Italy and in that capacity commanded a powerful league of GHIBELLINE cities including Milan, Pavia, Alessandria, and Asti. But when the archbishop of Milan expelled William’s deputy in 1282, the cities of Vercelli, Tortona, and Pavia withdrew from the coalition and allied themselves with the GUELPHs. Supported by troops from his son-in-law, the emperor of Constantinople, William was able to conquer Tortona, after which Pavia and Vercelli also surrendered to him. But in 1290 an uprising began in the Piedmont city of Alessandria, fomented apparently by the citizens of Asti. William fought against Alessandria to try to squelch the rebellion but was defeated and captured. The Alessandrians imprisoned William in an iron cage and put him on display, subjecting him to public ridicule. After 17 months of such treatment William died in his cage in February 1292, after which the Alessandrians abused his body as well. Giovanni made war on Alessandria in order to punish them for their treatment of his father, but the Alessandrians (buoyed by the support of Matteo Visconti, prince of Milan) were too strong for Giovanni and ultimately invaded Montferrat, where they captured the towns of Moncalvo, Trino, and Pontestura. Thus, Dante’s Sordello says, William’s war made his provinces of Montferrat and Canavese weep. 530

Z Zanche, Michel (d. ca. 1275) Very little is known about Michel Zanche, who appears in Canto 22 of the INFERNO. Much of our information about him is from early commentators on the COMMEDIA. It appears that he was governor of Logodoro, one of the four administrative districts of the island of Sardinia in the late 13th century, when the island was governed by PISA. Zanche is mentioned in Inferno 22, l. 88, as dwelling in bolgia five of Malebolge (the eighth circle of Hell), the bolgia of the grafters or “barraters.” Here the condemned sinners are boiled in pitch and torn apart by demons with flesh hooks if they venture out of the scalding liquid. When a group of devils catches a Navarrese grafter outside the pitch and threatens to tear him, he mentions that he has left Michel Zanche talking with FRA GOMITA OF GALLURA. Fra Gomita was a notorious barrater from Gallura, another of the districts of Sardinia. His connection with Michel Zanche is not clear. According to one source Fra Gomita was chancellor under judge NINO (UGOLINO) VISCONTI of

Pisa, who hanged Fra Gomita after the friar took bribes to allow condemned prisoners to escape. The judge replaced Fra Gomita with Michel Zanche, who turned out to be even more corrupt than Fra Gomita. There is little to corroborate this version of events, however. Another version of the story says that Zanche was governor of Logodoro during the reign of King Enzo of Sardinia (the son of the Emperor FREDERICK II OF SWABIA). According to this version King Enzo was captured in battle and was divorced from his queen, Adelasia de Torres, after which Michel Zanche married her. Scholars have recently demonstrated, however, that this legend is almost certainly false. What is known for certain of Michel Zanche is that in about 1275 (some scholars put the date at closer to 1290), Zanche was invited to a banquet at the house of his son-in-law, Branca d’Oria, who, greedy for Zanche’s riches, treacherously murdered him during the banquet. Branca appears later on, in Canto 33 of the Inferno, frozen in the ice in the circle of the treacherous to their guests.

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PART IV

Appendices

CHRONOLOGY

OF

LIFE

AND

WORKS

1287 Dante may have studied rhetoric at the university in Bologna. Late this year Beatrice marries the wealthy Florentine banker Simone de’ Bardi. Gemma gives birth to Dante’s first son, Giovanni.

1265 Probably May 29, under the sign of Gemini, Dante Alighieri is born in Florence to Alighiero II and Gabriella degli Abati (called “Bella”). 1266 Manfred and his Ghibelline supporters are crushed by the Guelphs at Benevento.

1289 Dante takes part in the Battle of Campaldino as a member of the Florentine cavalry. With their allies from Lucca the Florentine Guelphs defeat their Ghibelline rivals from Arezzo. Beatrice’s father, Folco Portinari, dies on December 31.

1272 Dante’s mother dies about this date. 1274 According to the Vita nuova Dante first meets Beatrice (Bici Portinari, daughter of Dante’s neighbor Folci) on this date.

1290 Beatrice dies June 8 at the age of 24, plunging Dante into deep grief.

1277 On February 9, Dante’s father betroths him to 10year-old Gemma di Manetto Donati.

1293 Dante begins the Vita nuova, a fictionalized autobiography of his love of Beatrice told through a collection of his youthful poems about her. About this time he begins his serious study of philosophy. Florence adopts the Ordinances of Justice, aimed at reducing the political power of the wealthy and aristocratic classes.

1283 Dante begins writing his earliest surviving lyric poetry. He meets Guido Cavalcanti about this time. It is about this date that Dante’s father dies. Dante also comes under the influence of the scholar and statesman Brunetto Latini, who probably introduces him to the works of Virgil, Boethius, and Cicero. Also at this time or shortly thereafter Dante marries Gemma Donati. Ultimately they have four children: Giovanni, Iacopo, Pietro, and Antonia.

1294 In March Charles Martel, titular king of Hungary and heir to Provence and to the kingdom of Naples, visits Florence. Dante gives a version of their meeting in Canto 8 of the Paradiso. Brunetto Latini dies. Boniface VIII becomes pope.

1285 Some scholars believe Dante was writing Il Fiore and perhaps the Detto d’Amore, two Italian redactions of the Roman de la Rose.

1295 Dante enters the political life of Florence by joining the Apothecaries Guild. Charles Martel dies. 535

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1296 Dante becomes a member of the influential Council of the Hundred. 1300 Dante is one of six priors or governing magistrates of Florence for the two-month period from June 15 to August 15. He and his fellow priors deal with the conflict between Black and White factions in the city by exiling the leaders of the two parties, including Corso Donati and Guido Cavalcanti. Cavalcanti dies of malaria before the year is out. Pope Boniface VIII proclaims the Jubilee Year. Easter of this year is the fictional date of the Divine Comedy. 1301 In October Dante is one of three emissaries sent to Rome to negotiate with Pope Boniface VIII. On November 1 Charles of Valois enters Florence, paving the way for the Black Guelphs, led by Corso Donati, to seize power in the city. 1302 Dante is accused by the Black government of graft in public office and ordered to appear in Florence to answer the charges against him. He is exiled and ultimately condemned to death on March 10 if he ever returns to his native city. He lives briefly in Forli. 1303 Boniface VIII dies October 11. Dante is staying in Verona with Bartolomeo della Scala. 1304 Florentine exiles planning an attack on the city are defeated at Lastra on July 20. Dante breaks from his fellow exiles. He begins writing the Convivio, an ambitious work intended to introduce the arguments of philosophy to a vernacular audience. Each book was to begin with one of Dante’s previously composed canzone and would present philosophical ideas by interpreting the poems allegorically. Only four books of the projected 15 are ever completed. About this time he is also working on De vulgari eloquentia, Dante’s

Latin treatise justifying the use of the vernacular language in writing serious literary works. Of the four projected books for this volume Dante finished only the first and abandoned the work 14 chapters into Book 2. Dante is living in Bologna, where he befriends the poet Cino da Pistoia, also an exile. 1305 Clement V becomes pope on June 5. Dante stays briefly in Padua, where he meets Giotto. Later he is staying with the marchese Malaspina in the ancient Tuscan town of Lunigiana. 1306 By this time Dante is probably living in Lucca, working on the Convivio. 1307 Some scholars have speculated that Dante visited Paris between 1307 and 1309. 1308 Henry VII of Luxembourg is elected Holy Roman Emperor. Probably about this time Dante abandons the Convivio and begins work on the Inferno. 1309 Clement V moves the seat of the papacy to Avignon. 1310 Dante is staying in the Casentino Valley in Tuscany. Henry VII asserts his intention of being crowned in Italy. He crosses the Alps and enters Lombardy. Dante addresses a Latin epistle to the princes of Italy, urging them to welcome the new emperor. Henry is crowned king of Lombardy in Milan, possibly with Dante in attendance. Encouraged by Henry’s accession, he also begins work on his political treatise, De monarchia. 1311 Dante is staying in the Casentino Valley, the guest of Count Bandino. He writes more political epistles, including one to Henry himself.

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1312 Henry is crowned by the pope at Saint John Lateran in Rome. Dante moves to Verona as the guest of the Ghibelline captain Can Grande della Scala

1318 Purgatorio is completed and in circulation. Dante moves to Ravenna at the invitation of Guido Novello da Polenta, the nephew of Francesca da Rimini.

1313 Henry unsuccessfully besieges Florence. He dies of malaria near Siena on August 24.

1319 Giovanni del Virgilio, a Bolognese professor of literature, invites Dante to Bologna to be crowned with the laurel. Dante rejects the offer but corresponds with Giovanni in Latin eclogues.

1314 Dante completes the Inferno and begins circulating copies. Clement V dies on April 20. 1315 Dante rejects a possible amnesty from Florence that would have required him to debase himself. He and his sons are subsequently sentenced to death by beheading. 1316 John XXII is finally elected pope to succeed Clement V.

1320 On January 20 Dante returns to Verona to give a scientific lecture on the elevation of water on the surface of Earth. Final editing of the Paradiso takes place. 1321 After traveling to Venice on business of Guido Novello da Polenta, Dante contracts malaria and dies September 13 or 14. He is buried in Ravenna.

INTERNET SOURCES A Google search of “Dante Alighieri” yields 1,170,000 hits. Of these only a few dozen are of any real use to a student of Dante. The following are the sites that I have found most useful.

ON

DANTE

journey” through the three realms of Dante’s afterlife. The user clicks on Hell, Purgatory, or Paradise; chooses a particular circle or sphere; and witnesses a visual representation of that region. By further exploration the user can bring up figures of souls the pilgrim Dante encounters here, explanatory notes, images (including the illustrations of Sandro Botticelli), Italian audio readings of the relevant passages, and study questions for students of the poem. The site deals only with the Divine Comedy.

Dante Online http://www.danteonline.it/english/home_ita.asp Sponsored by the Società Dantesca Italiana, this site has an English homepage with links to a brief life of the poet, online editions of all of his works, and a curious “Interviews” page, which presents imaginary interviews by contemporary thinkers addressing questions to Dante. There is a bibliography link, but at present I have found no means of searching it. There are a “News” page and a link to the society’s homepage with links to other Web sites. Particularly valuable is a list of manuscripts, a few of which can be linked to scanned images of the manuscripts themselves, page by page, with transcriptions. It contains a special search engine that allows scholars to find individual words in any text of Dante, or to search for specific manuscripts.

Dante’s Lyric Poems http://www.italianstudies.org/poetry/ Maintained by the State University of New York at Stonybrook, this site presents Joseph Tusiani’s contemporary translations of Dante’s lyric poems in a searchable Web edition edited by Charles Franco. Dartmouth Dante Project http://dante.dartmouth.edu/ This site contains a searchable full-text database containing more than 70 commentaries on the Divine Comedy, dating from the 14th through the 20th centuries, including those of Boccaccio and Benvenuto da Imola.

Dante Society of America http://www.dantesociety.org/ This site, which lists members, events, and prizes of the society, is most valuable for the access it provides to full-text articles in the Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America and searchable bibliographies as published in Dante Studies from 1953 to 2003.

Digital Dante http://dante.ilt.columbia.edu/new/index.html Maintained by Columbia University, this site includes, first, a section with Dante’s biography, a description the Italy of his day, and a chronology. There is a full online text of the Comedy with two different English translations (Longfellow’s and Allen Mandelbaum’s), and the full text of the Convivio in Robert Lansing’s translation. Some schol-

Dante Worlds http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/index.html This site, sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin, bills itself as “an integrated multimedia 538

Internet Sources on Dante 539 arly essays are available, including some from the Cambridge Dante Companion. There are images from Dorè, Botticelli, and Salvador Dali, plus maps and slides from Italy. The site also contains a brief bibliography and a search engine. The Divine Comedy http://www.italianstudies.org/comedy/index.htm Maintained by the State University of New York at Stonybrook, this site presents an online searchable translation of the Divine Comedy by James Finn Cotter, the Web edition edited by Charles Franco. Homepage for Dante Studies http://www.lieberknecht.de/dante/welc_fr.html This site, maintained by Otto Lieberknecht, is useful as a general clearinghouse with links to a large number of other sites by category. Under “Dante Resources,” for example, the user can link to Dante’s works online, translations online, bibliographies, events, Dante Societies, and a list of other major Dante sites. Princeton Dante Project http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/index.html This site, maintained by Robert Hollander, may be the most valuable for English readers of Dante. A tutorial narrated by Hollander introduces users to the features of the site, chief of which is a program that allows one to call up any passage from the Comedy, with a side-by-side English translation, and explore philological notes, a modern commentary, a compilation of all commentaries on that passage from the 14th through the 19th centuries, an audio feature that presents the passage in Italian or in English, and images (from two artists) pertaining

to that passage. The site includes searchable texts of all Dante’s minor works, with English translations of most of them; some of Hollander’s own lectures; maps and diagrams; canto summaries; links to other Internet resources; and a bibliography in PDF format (not searchable). The Summa theologica of Thomas Aquinas http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.html Complete translation of Aquinas’s major opus, available in the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Originally published by Benziger Brothers in 1947–48, this text is in the public domain. The William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies http://www.dante.nd.edu/ A Dante site maintained by the University of Notre Dame, this site provides information about the Zahm Dante collection, a highly significant collection of materials on Dante and his age. The site also provides information concerning the university’s Ambrosiana Microfilm collection, a collection of photocopied material from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. In addition there is information about the exhibition Renaissance Dante in Print, sponsored by the Devers program, with digital reproductions of pages from the printed editions. The World of Dante http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/dante/ Edited by Dorothy Parker at the University of Virginia, this site is a hypermedia exploration of the Inferno. It includes hot links to illustrations of the Inferno, plus a number of maps and other aids.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

OF

DANTE’S WORKS Inferno: Commentary; Vol. 3, Purgatorio: Italian Text and Verse Translation; Vol. 4, Purgatorio: Commentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997–2000. Petrocchi, Giorgio, ed. La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata. 4 vols. Florence: Le Lettere, 1994. Pinsky, Robert, trans. The Inferno of Dante. Foreword by John Frecerro and notes by Nicole Pinsky. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994. Singleton, Charles, trans. The Divine Comedy. 6 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970–75.

Because this text is intended for English readers of Dante, I have listed here what I have found to be the most useful translations of Dante’s texts, with only a few of the most important Italian editions for the more serious students. Commedia Ciardi, John, trans. The Divine Comedy. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1970. Durling, Robert M., ed. and trans. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 1, Inferno. Introduction and notes by Ronald L. Martinez and Robert M. Durling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. ———. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 2, Purgatorio. Introduction and notes by Ronald L. Martinez and Robert M. Durling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Hollander, Jean, and Robert Hollander, trans. Inferno. Introduction and notes by Robert Hollander. New York: Random House, 2000. Hollander, Jean, and Robert Hollander, trans. Paradiso. Introduction and notes by Robert Hollander. New York: Random House, 2007. Hollander, Jean, and Robert Hollander, trans. Purgatorio. Introduction and notes by Robert Hollander. New York: Random House, 2003. Mandelbaum, Allen, trans. The Divine Comedy. Introduction by Eugenio Montale and notes by Peter Armour. New York: Knopf, 1995. Merwin, W. S., trans. Purgatorio: A New Verse Translation. New York: Knopf, 2000. Musa, Mark, ed. and trans. The Divine Comedy. 3 vols. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1984–1986. ———, ed. and trans. Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy: Verse Translation and Commentary. Vol. 1, Inferno: Italian Text and Verse Translation; Vol. 2,

Il Convivio Lansing, Richard H., ed. and trans. Dante’s Il Convivio (The Banquet). Garland Library of Medieval Literature. New York: Garland Press, 1990. Ryan, Christopher, trans. Dante: The Banquet. Stanford French and Italian Studies, vol. 61. Saratoga, Calif.: Anma Libri, 1989. Vasoli, C., and D. De Robertis, eds. Convivio. In Opera minori, vol. 1, part 2. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1988.

Eclogues Wicksteed, Philip, and E. G. Gardner, trans. “Exchange of Latin Poems between Giovanni del Virgilio and Dante, ca. 1320.” In Testo critico della Società Dantesca Italiana. Edited by Ermenegildo Pistelli. Florence: Società Dantesca Italiana, 1960. Available online. URL: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/ pdp/index.html. Accessed 10 June 2007.

Epistles Brugnoli, Giorgio, ed. “Epistola XIII [a Cangrande].” In La letteratura italiana: storia e testi, vol. 5, pt.

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Bibliography of Dante’s Works 2:512–521; 558–643. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1979. Dante Alighieri. Monarchy and Three Political Letters. Introduction by Donald Nicholl. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954. Toynbee, Paget, ed. The Letters of Dante. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.

De monarchia Dante Alighieri. Monarchy and Three Political Letters. Introduction by Donald Nicholl. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954. Kay, Richard, trans. Dante’s Monarchia. Studies and Texts 131. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1998. Ricci, P. G., ed. Monarchia. Edizione Nazionale delle opera di Dante Alighieri a cura della Societá Dantesca Italiana, vol. V. Milan: Mondadori, 1965. Shaw, Prue, ed. and trans. Monarchia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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Diehl, Patrick S., trans. Dante’s Rime. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979. Foster, K., and P. Boyde, ed. and trans. Dante’s Lyric Poetry. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. Goldin, Frederick, ed. and intro. German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973. Tusiani, Joseph, trans. Dante’s Lyric Poems. Introduction and notes by Giuseppe C. Di Scipio. 2nd ed. Ottawa: Legas, 1999.

Vita nuova Cervigni, Dino S., and Edward Vasta, ed. and trans. Vita nuova. Notre Dame, Ind. and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. Musa, Mark, trans. Dante’s Vita Nuova. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973. Reynolds, Barbara. Dante: La Vita Nuova (Poems of Youth). Baltimore: Penguin, 1969.

De vulgari eloquentia Quaestio de aqua et terra Wicksteed, Philip, trans. Testo critico della Società Dantesca Italiana. Edited by Ermenegildo Pistelli Florence: Società Dantesca Italiana, 1960. Available online. URL: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/ pdp/index.html. Accessed 10 June 2007.

Botterill, Steven, ed. and trans. De Vulgari Eloquentia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Purcell, Sally, trans. and intro. Literature in the Vernacular (De Vulgari Eloquentia). Manchester, England: Carcantet New Press, 1981.

Works Attributed to Dante Rime Cirigliano, Marc, ed. and trans. The Complete Lyric Poems of Dante Alighieri. Studies in Italian Literature, vol. 3. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997. Contini, Gianfranco, ed. Rime. In Dante Alighieri, Opere Minori, vol. 1, part 1, 251–552. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1984.

Il Fiore and Detto d’Amore Casciani, Santa, and Christopher Kleinhenz, trans. The Fiore and the Detto d’amore. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

OF

SECONDARY SOURCES Rachel Jacoff, 45–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Auerbach, Eric. Dante: Poet of the Secular World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Baranski, Zygmunt G., and Patrick Boyde, eds. The Fiore in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany. Devers Series in Dante Studies, vol. 2. Notre Dame, Ind. and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. Barber, Joseph A. “The Role of the Other in Dante’s Vita nuova.” Studies in Philology 78 (1981): 128–137. Barbi, Michele. Life of Dante. Translated by Paul Ruggiers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960. Barbi, Michele, and Francesco Maggini, eds. Rime della “Vita nuova” e della Giovinezza. Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1956. Barbi, Michele, and Vincenzo Pernicone. Rime della Maturità e del’Esilio. Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1969. Barolini, Teodolinda. “Beyond Courtly Dualism: Thinking about Gender in Dante’s Lyrics.” In Dante for the New Millennium, edited by Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storley, 65–89. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. ———. “Dante and Francesca da Rimini: Realpolitik, Romance, Gender.” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 75, no. 1 (January 2000): 1–28. ———. “Dante and the Lyric Past.” Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 14–33. New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1993. ———. Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the “Comedy.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Thousands of books and articles have appeared on Dante over the years. The majority of these are in Italian or in languages other than English. Once again because this book is intended for English readers, virtually all of the sources I have listed here are written in English. Abrams, Richard. “Illicit Pleasures: Dante among the Sensualists (Purgatorio XXVI).” Modern Language Notes 100 (1985): 1–41. ———. “Inspiration and Gluttony: The Moral Context of Dante’s Poetics of the ‘Sweet New Style.’ ” Modern Language Notes 91 (1976): 30–59. Anderson, William. Dante the Maker. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 3 vols. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947–1948. Available online. URL: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ aquinas/summa.html. Accessed 24 July 2006. Armour, Peter. “Dante’s contrapasso: Context and Texts.” Italian Studies 55 (2000): 1–20. ———. Dante’s Griffin and the History of the World: A Study in Earthly Paradise (Purgatorio Cantos XXIX– XXXIII). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. ———. The Door of Purgatory: A Study of Multiple Symbolism in Dante’s “Purgatorio.” Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983. ———. “Time and Space in Dante’s Comedy.” Studi d’Italianistica nell’Africa Australe/Italian Studies in Southern Africa 14, no. 2 (2001): 1–16. Ascoli, Albert Russell. “ ‘Neminem ante nos’: Historicity and Authority in the De vulgari eloquentia.” Annali d ‘italianistica 8 (1990) 163–231. ———. “The Unfinished Author: Dante’s Rhetoric of Authority in Convivio and De vulgari eloquentia.” In The Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by

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Bibliography of Secondary Sources ———. “Demythologizing Dante: For a “New Formalism’ in Dante Studies.” Quaderni d’italianistica 10, nos. 1–2 (1989): 35–53. ———. “Medieval Multiculturalism and Dante’s Theology of Hell.” Italiana 9 (2000): 82–102. ———. The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. Barolini, Teodolinda, and H. Wayne Storey, eds. Dante for the New Millennium. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. Bemrose, Stephen. “Gaudium et Pax: What Being in Heaven Means for Dante.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 41, no. 4 (January 2005): 71–89. ———. “God So Loves the Soul: Intellections of Immortality in Dante.” Medium Ævum 74, no. 1 (2005): 86–108. ———. A New Life of Dante. Exeter, England: University of Exeter Press, 2000. Bergin, Thomas G. Dante. New York: Orion Press, 1965. ———. Perspectives on the Divine Comedy. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1967. Bloom, Harold, ed. Dante’s Divine Comedy: Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Botterill, Steven. Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the “Commedia.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ———. “Mysticism and Meaning in Dante’s Paradiso.” In Dante for the New Millennium, edited by Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storley, 143– 151. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. Boyde, Patrick. Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. ———. Dante’s Style in His Lyric Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. ———. Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante’s “Comedy.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. Perception and Passion in Dante’s Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Brandeis, Irma. The Ladder of Vision: A Study of Dante’s Comedy. New York: Doubleday, 1961. Brownlee, Kevin. “The Practice of Cultural Authority: Italian Responses to French Cultural Dominance in Il Tesoretto, Il Fiore, and the Commedia.”

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Forum for Modern Language Studies 33, no. 3 (July 1997): 258–269. Butler, George F. “Statius and Dante’s Giants: The Thebaid and the Commedia.” Forum Italicum 39, no. 1 (spring 2005): 5–17. ———. “Statius, Lucan, and Dante’s Giants: Virgil’s Loss of Authority in Inferno 31.” Quaderni d’Italianistica: Official Journal of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies 24, no. 2 (2003): 5–21. Cachey, Theodore J., Jr., ed. Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1995. Caesar, Michael, ed. Dante: The Critical Heritage, 1314 (?)–1870. London: Rutledge, 1989. Camille, Michael. “The Pose of the Queer: Dante’s Gaze, Brunetto Latini’s Body.” In Queering the Middle Ages, edited by Glenn Burger and Steven F. Kruger, 57–86. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Carroll, John S. Prisoners of Hope. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1971. Cary, Phillip. “The Weight of Love: Augustinian Metaphors of Movement in Dante’s Souls.” In Augustine and Literature, edited by Robert P. Kennedy, Kim Paffenroth, John Doody, and Marylu Hill, 15–36. New York: Lexington, 2006. Cassell, Anthony K. “The Exiled Dante’s Hope for Reconciliation: Monarchia 3.16–18.” Annali d’Italianistica 20 (2002): 425–449. ———. The Monarchia Controversy. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 2004. Chubb, Thomas Caldecot. Dante and His World. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1966. Clements, Robert J., ed. American Critical Essays on the Divine Comedy. New York: New York University Press, 1967. Cogan, Marc. The Design in Wax: The Structure of the “Divina Commedia” and Its Significance. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1999. Collins, James. Pilgrim in Love: An Introduction to Dante and His Spirituality. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1984. Cosmos, Umberto. Handbook to Dante Studies. Oxford: Blackwell, 1950. Davie, Mark. “Dante’s Latin Eclogues.” In Classical Latin Poetry/Medieval Latin Poetry/Gree Poetry: Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar, edited by

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Francis Cairns, 183–198. Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 1977. Davis, Charles Till. “Dante and the Empire.” In Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 67–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. Dante and the Idea of Rome. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. ———. “Dante’s Vision of History.” Dante Studies 118 (2000): 243–259. Decoste, Mary-Michelle. “Reading Dante’s Vita nuova.” Quaderni d’Italianistica: Official Journal of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies 25, no. 2 (2004): 3–19. De Gennaro, Angelo A. The Reader’s Companion to Dante’s Divine Comedy. New York: Philosophical Library, 1986. Demaray, John G. The Invention of Dante’s “Commedia.” New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974. D’Entrèves, Alessandro Passerin. Dante as a Political Thinker. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. Dinsmore, C. A. Aids to the Study of Dante. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903. Dronke, Peter. Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. ———. Dante’s Second Love: The Originality and the Contexts of the “Convivio.” Leeds, England: Maney and Sons, 1997. Dunbar, H. Flanders. Symbolism in Medieval Thought and Its Culmination in the Divine Comedy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1929. Durling, Robert M. “The Body and the Flesh in the Purgatorio.” In Dante for the New Millennium, edited by Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storley, 183– 191. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. ———. “Farinata and the Body of Christ.” Stanford Italian Review 2 (1981): 5–35. Durling, Robert M., and Ronald L. Martinez. Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s Rime petrose. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Elata-Aster, Gerda. “Gathering the Leaves and Squaring the Circle: Recording, Reading and Writing in Dante’s Vita nuova and Divina Commedia.” Italian Quarterly 24, no. 92 (1983): 5–26. Fasolini, Diego. “ ‘Illuminating’ and ‘Illuminated’ Light: A Biblical-Theological Interpretation of

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Klemp, P. J. “The Women in the Middle: Layers of Love in Dante’s Vita nuova.” Italica 61, no. 3 (1984): 185–194. Lansing, Richard H., ed. A Dante Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 2000. ———. From Image to Idea: A Study of the Simile in Dante’s “Commedia.” Ravenna: Longo, 1977. ———. “Narrative Design in Dante’s Earthly Paradise.” Dante Studies 113 (1994): 101–113. Leo, Ulrich. “The Unfinished Convivio and Dante’s Rereading of the Aeneid.” Mediaeval Studies 13 (1951): 41–64. Levers, Toby. “The Image of Authorship in the Final Chapter of the Vita nuova.” Italian Studies 57 (2002): 5–19. Lewis, R. W. B. Dante. New York: Penguin, 2001. Limentani, Uberto, ed. The Mind of Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Lindheim, Nancy. “Body, Soul, and Immortality: Some Readings in Dante’s Commedia.” Modern Language Notes 105, no. 1 (January 1990): 1–32. Mancusi-Ungaro, Donna. Dante and the Empire. New York: P. Lang, 1987. Mandelbaum, Allen, Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross, eds. Lectura Dantis: Inferno—a Canto-byCanto Commentary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Marti, Kevin. “Dante’s ‘Baptism’ and the Theology of the Body in Purgatorio 1–2.” Traditio 45 (1989– 1990): 167–190. Martinez, Ronald L. “Dante and the Two Canons: Statius in Virgil’s Footsteps (Purgatorio 21– 30).” Comparative Literature Studies 32 (1995): 151–175. ———. “Lament and Lamentations in Purgatorio and the Case of Dante’s Statius.” Dante Studies 115 (1997): 45–88. ———. “Mourning Beatrice: The Rhetoric of Threnody in the Vita nuova.” Modern Language Notes 113 (1998): 1–29. Masciandaro, Franco. Dante as Dramatist. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. Mazzaro, Jerome. “Exception and Rule in Dante’s Purgatorio.” Forum Italicum 39, no. 2 (2005): 311–325. ———. The Figure of Dante: An Essay on the Vita nuova. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Bibliography of Secondary Sources ———. “Paradiso XX, the Missing Virgin and the Absent Presence.” Forum Italicum 35, no. 1 (2001): 5–22. Mazzeo, Joseph Anthony. Medieval Cultural Tradition in Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960. ———. Structure and Thought in the “Paradiso.” Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1958. Mazzoni, Francesco. “L’Epistola a Cangrande.” Rendiconti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche. Ser. 8, 10 (1955): 157–198. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Critical Essays on Dante. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991. ———. Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the “Divine Comedy.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979. ———. “The Heaven of the Sun: Dante between Aquinas and Bonaventure.” In Dante for the New Millennium, edited by Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storley, 152–168. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. ———. “The Language of Poetry in the Vita nuova.” Rivista de studi italiani 1 (1988): 3–14. ———. “Life of Dante.” In The Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 1–13. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. McKenzie, Kenneth. “The Symbolic Structure of Dante’s Vita nuova.” PMLA 18 (1903): 341–355. Moevs, Christian. The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Moore, Edward. “The Genuineness of the Dedicatory Epistle to Can Grande.” Studies in Dante. 3rd series, 284–369. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903. ———. Studies in Dante. 3 vols. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. Morgan, Alison. Dante and the Medieval Other World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Morrison, Molly. “Looking at God: Imagery for the Divinity in Dante’s Paradiso.” Forum Italicum 35, no. 2 (fall 2001): 305–317. Mozzillo-Howell, Elizabeth. “Monarchia II.x and the Medieval Theory of Consequences.” Italian Studies 57 (2002): 20–36. Musa, Mark. Advent at the Gates: Dante’s Comedy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974. ———. Essays on Dante. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964.

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Nardi, Bruno. La caduta di Lucifero e l’autenticità della “Quaestio de aqua et terra.” Turin: SEI, 1959. Nolan, Barbara. “The Vita nuova: Dante’s Book of Revelation.” Dante Studies 88 (1970): 51–77. Nolan, David, ed. Dante Commentaries: Eight Studies of the Divine Comedy. Dublin: Irish Academic Press and Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1977. Orr, M. A. Dante and the Early Astronomers. Rev. ed. London: Allan Wingate, 1957. Palacio, Miguel Asin. Islam and The Divine Comedy. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1926. Paolucci, Anne, ed. Dante: Beyond the Commedia. Wilmington, Del.: Griffon, for Bagehot Council, 2004. Pequigney, Joseph. “Sodomy in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio.” Representations 36 (1991): 22–42. Pertile, Lino. “Does the Stilnovo Go to Heaven?” In Dante for the New Millennium, edited by Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storley, 104–114. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. Perugi, Maurizio. “Arnaut Daniel in Dante.” Studi danteschi 51 (1978): 51–151. Phipps, Matt. “On the Presence and Significance of Metaphorical Micro-Texts in Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia. Italianist 26, no. 1 (2006): 5–16. Psaki, F. Regina. “Love for Beatrice: Transcending Contradiction in the Paradiso” In Dante for the New Millennium, edited by Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storley, 115–130. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. Pugliese, Guido. “Heresy and Politics in Inferno 10.” In Dante and the Unorthodox: The Aesthetics of Transgression, edited by James Miller, 170–181. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005. Quinones, Ricardo J. Dante Alighieri. Boston: Twayne, 1979. Raffa, Guy P. “Dante’s Poetics of Exile.” Annali d’Italianistica 20 (2002): 73–87. ———. Divine Dialectic: Dante’s Incarnational Poetry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Regn, Gerhard. “Double Authorship: Prophetic and Poetic Inspiration in Dante’s Paradise.” Modern Language Notes 122, no. 1 (January 2007): 167–185. Risden, Edward. “Dante’s Vita Nuova as Ante-Chapel to the Commedia.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 8, no. 1 (spring 2000): 85–93. Robey, David. Sound and Structure in the “Divine Comedy.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

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Rubin, Harriet. Dante in Love: The World’s Greatest Poem and How It Made History. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. Ruggiers, Paul R. Florence in the Age of Dante. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964. Sayers, Dorothy. Further Papers on Dante. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957. ———. Introductory Papers on Dante. London: Methuen, 1954. Schnapp, Jeffrey T. “Introduction to Purgatorio.” In The Cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 192–207. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante’s “Paradise.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Scott, John A. “Cino da Pistoia and Dante Alighieri.” In Flinders Dante Conferences 2002 and 2004, edited by Margaret Baker, Flavia Coassin, and Diana Glenn, 26–37. Adelaide, Australia: Lythrium, 2005. ———. Dante’s Political Purgatory. Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. ———. “Dante’s ‘Sweet New Style’ and the Vita nuova.” Italica 42 (1965): 98–107. ———. Understanding Dante. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. ———. “The Unfinished Convivio as a Pathway to the Comedy.” Dante Studies 113 (1995): 31–56. Shapiro, Marianne. De Vulgari Eloquentia: Dante’s Book of Exile. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Shaw, J. E. Essay on the “Vita nuova.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1929. Singleton, Charles S. Dante Studies I: Elements of Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954. ———. Dante Studies II: Journey to Beatrice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957. ———. An Essay on the Vita nuova. 1949. Reprint. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Smarr, Janet Levarie. “Celestial Patterns and Symmetries in the Vita nuova.” Dante Studies 98 (1980): 145–150. Smith, James R., trans. The Earliest Lives of Dante. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1963.

Sowell, Madison A., ed. Dante and Ovid: Studies in Intertextuality. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991. Spitzer, Leo. “Speech and Language in Inferno XIII.” Italica 19, no. 3 (September 1942): 81–104. Stambler, Bernard. Dante’s Other World. New York: New York University Press, 1957. Stark, John. “The Old Man of Crete.” Forum Italicum 37, no. 1 (spring 2003): 5–19. Stephany, William A. “Dante’s Harpies: ‘tristo annunzio di futuro danno.’ ” Italica 62, no. 1 (spring 1985): 24–33. Storey, J. Wayne. “Early Editorial Forms of Dante’s Lyrics.” In Dante for the New Millennium, edited by Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storey, 16–43. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. Sturm-Maddox, Sara. “The Pattern of Witness: Narrative Design in the Vita nuova.” Forum Italicum 12, no. 2 (1978): 216–232. ———. “The Rime petrose and the Purgatorial Palinode.” Studies in Philology 84 (1987): 119–133. Tambling, Jeremy. “Dreaming the Siren: Dante and Melancholy.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 40, no. 1 (January 2004): 56–69. ———. “Thinking Melancholy: Allegory and the ‘Vita nuova.’ ” Romanic Review 96, no. 1 (January 2005): 85–105. Tatlock, J. S. P. “The Last Cantos of the Purgatorio.” Modern Philology 32 (1934–1935): 111–125. Thompson, David B. Dante’s Epic Journeys. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Took, John F. Dante: Lyric Poet and Philosopher: An Introduction to the Minor Works. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. ———. “Dante’s Incarnationalism: An Essay in Theological Wisdom.” Italian Studies 61, no. 1 (spring 2006): 3–17. ———. “ ‘S’io m’intuassi, come tu t’inmii’ (Par., IX. 81): Patterns of Collective Being in Dante.” Modern Language Review 101, no. 2 (April 2006): 402–413. ———. “Towards a Life of Dante: Ontological Anxiety and the Salvific Function of the Word.” Italian Studies 59 (2004): 1–16. Toynbee, Paget. Concise Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante. Revised by Charles S. Singleton. New York: Phaeton, 1968.

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Watt, Mary Alexandria. The Cross That Dante Bears: Pilgrimage, Crusade, and the Cruciform Church in the Divine Comedy. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. Wenzel, Siegfried. “Dante’s Rationale for the Seven Deadly Sins (Purgatorio XVII).” Modern Language Review 60 (1965): 529–533. West, Simon. “A Short-Lived Enchantment: Some Observations on the Sonnet Exchange between Dante and Cavalcanti.” In Flinders Dante Conferences 2002 and 2004, edited by Margaret Baker, Flavia Coassin, and Diana Glenn, 17–25. Adelaide, Australia: Lythrium, 2005. Wicksteed, Philip H. Dante and Aquinas. London and Toronto: Dent, 1913. ———, trans. The Early Lives of Dante. London: Alexander Moring, 1904. Wilkins, Ernest, and Thomas Bergin. A Concordance to the Divine Comedy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965. Williams, Charles. The Figure of Beatrice. New York: Noonday, 1961. Wilson, A. N., foreword. Life of Dante. London: Hesperus, 2002. Yavneh, Naomi. “Dante’s ‘dolce serena’ and the Monstrosity of the Female Body.” In Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination, edited by Keala Jewell, 109–136. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 2001.

INDEX Note: Page numbers in boldface indicate main entries. Page numbers in italic indicate illustrations.

A Abbagliato 69, 373 absolution 21, 86, 96, 108, 115 Accorso, Francesco d’ 50, 373 Acheron River 30, 49, 106 Achilles 35, 47, 373–374, 432, 517, 526 A ciasun ‘alma presa e gentil core (“To every captive soul and loving heart”) 350 The Acts of Peter and Paul (apocryphal text) 72 Adam 374 King David 431 De vulgari eloquentia 363–365 Inferno 30 John the Apostle 474 Saint Lucy 481 Paradiso 158, 179, 224, 233–234, 241 Purgatorio 158 Sinon 515 Adam, Master 25, 69, 85, 86, 374–375 Adam of Brescia 374–375 Adrian IV (pope) 375 Adrian V (pope) 135, 142, 375–376, 484, 495 Aeneas 31, 302, 340 The Aeneid (Virgil) 376–377 Cacus 407 Casella 414 Cato of Utica 416 La commedia 22 Il convivio 277 Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro 340

Dante Alighieri 13 Dido 432 Diomedes 432 Epistles 289 Fortune 445 Inferno 31, 52, 53, 61, 66, 81 Lucan 479 Manto 485 Paradiso 208 Francesco Petrarch 501 Purgatorio 100, 106, 109– 110, 120, 131, 134, 136, 146, 155, 159, 166 Ripheus 508 Sinon 515 Publius Papinus Statius 517 Ulysses 527 afterlife Il convivio 259, 262 Inferno 31 Agamemnon 178, 185 Agapetus I (pope) 178 Aglauros (princess of Athens) 119, 128 Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) 120, 130 Ahasuerus, King 120, 131 Alberigo, Friar 24, 89, 93, 377–378, 401, 441 Albert I of Austria (king of Germany) 13, 216 Alberti, Alessandro and Napoleone degli 88, 100, 190, 378, 429 Alberto della Scala (lord of Verona) 133, 134 Albertus Magnus 378–379 Anselm of Canterbury 383 Il convivio 268 Inferno 84 Paradiso 183, 192, 202 Purgatorio 133 Siger of Brabant 514

Albigensian Crusade 191, 193, 205 alchemy 69, 84, 412 Alcmaeon 124, 184 Al cor gentil (“The Gentle Heart”) (Guinizelli) 155, 257, 263, 324, 354 Aldobrandesco, Guglielmo 209, 379 Aldobrandesco, Omberto 116, 122, 379 Alessandro da Romena, Count 284, 285 Alexander IV (pope) 206 Alexander the Great 379–380 Aristotle 386 De monarchia 303 Godfrey of Bouillon 458 Inferno 47, 52 Judas Maccabeus 482 Paulus Orosius 496 Thaïs 520 Alighiero di Bellincione d’Alighiero 4, 5, 54, 380, 392 allegory 380–381 Cato of Utica 416 in La commedia 22–23 La commedia 21 Il convivio 250, 260–261 De monarchia 305 Detto d’amore 431 Il Fiore 440–441 Fortune 445–446 Medusa 487 La Vita nuova 355 Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d’ombra (“To the short day and the great circle of the shadow”) 336–337 Althaea (queen of Calydon) 152 L’amaoro lagrimar che voi faceste (“The bitter tears that you once used to shed”) 359

551

Amata, Queen 120, 131 Ambrose, Saint 115–116 Amor, che movi tua vertù da cielo (“Love, who sends down your power from heaven”) 329–330 Amor, che ne la lente (“Love, that speaks to me within my mind”) 250, 369 Amor, che ne la mente mi ragiona (“Love, that speaks to me within my mind”) 262–264, 267–268 Amor, da che convien pur ch’io mi doglia (“Love, since after all I am forced to grieve”) 347–348 Amor, tu vedi ben che questa donna (“Love you see well that this lady”) 337–338 Amore e’l cor gentil sono una cosa (“Love and the gracious heart are a single thing”) 354 Amphiaraus 60, 124, 184 Amphion (king of Thebes) 124 Anastasius II (pope) 43, 381–382 Angel of Chastity 140, 156 angels Il convivio 250, 258, 261 Paradiso 173, 225–226, 236–238 Purgatorio 128 Angiolieri, Cecco 86, 382–383 Anne, Saint 241, 246 annunciation 116, 121, 154, 241, 246 Anselm of Canterbury, Saint 188, 194, 205, 383 Antaeus 70, 70, 87, 87–88, 383–384 Ante-Purgatory 96–116

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Antiochus IV Epiphanes (Seleucid king) 213 Apollo 44, 58, 174, 175, 294 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas, Saint Arachne 117, 124, 124 Arbia 384 Archangels 173, 237 Arezzo 384 Arno 387 Leonardo Bruni 402–403 Buonconte da Montefeltro 404 Battle of Campaldino 409–410 Giovanni Cimabue 424 Dante Alighieri 7 Corso Donati 436 Epistles 288 Florence 443 Ghibelline 453 Griffolino da Arezzo 460 Guido Guerra 462 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Francesco Petrarch 500 Provenzan Salvani 505 Purgatorio 118, 127 Tegghiaio Aldobrandi 520 Tuscany 523 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 Nino Visconti 529 Argenti degli Adimari, Filippo 24, 28, 41, 44, 384–385, 385 Aristotelianism 173, 229–230, 254, 309, 311 Aristotle 385–386 Albertus Magnus 378 Alexander the Great 380 Anselm of Canterbury 383 Averroës 389 Belacqua 391 Boethius 397 Leonardo Bruni 403 Il convivio 265, 266 Dante Alighieri 6 De monarchia 300, 302, 307 Epistles 291 Giacomo da Lentino 453–454 Homer 468 Il convivio 251 Inferno 28, 31, 32, 40, 52, 84 Plato 503 Purgatorio 105, 107, 121 Pythagoras 506 Quaestio de aqua et terra 309

Michael Scott 512 Siger of Brabant 514 Taddeo d’Alderotto of Bologna 519 Thomas Aquinas 522 Ark of the Covenant 116, 121, 291 Arnaut Daniel (Arnaud) 386–387 Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d’ombra 337 Com più v fere amor co’suio vincastri 315–316 Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro 339 Dante Alighieri 12 De vulgari eloquentia 367–369 Giraut de Bornelh 458 Guido Guinizelli 464 Purgatorio 140, 155 Arno River 387, 387–388 Amor, da che convien pur ch’io mi doglia 348 Arezzo 384 Buonconte da Montefeltro 404 Battle of Campaldino 409 Francesco dei Cavalcanti 417 Dante Alighieri 7 Florence 441 Inferno 71 Pisa 503 Purgatorio 100, 118–119, 127 Tuscany 523, 524 Ars poetica (Horace) 368 Athamas (king of Thebes) 69 Augustine of Hippo, Saint 388–399 allegory 381 Anselm of Canterbury 383 Benedict of Nursia 393 Boethius 398 Il convivio 251 Dante Alighieri 8 De monarchia 304, 305 Fortune 445 Francis of Assisi 448 Gregory the Great 460 Nimrod 493 Paulus Orosius 496 Paradiso 183, 245 Francesco Petrarch 501 Purgatorio 96, 115–116, 122, 129, 132, 142 La Vita nuova 360 Augustus Caesar (Octavian) 178–179, 186 avarice 31, 132, 135, 141, 142, 147

Averroës (Ibn Rushd) 389–390 Il convivio 262 De monarchia 301 Inferno 31 Paradiso 192, 202 Purgatorio 133, 153 Michael Scott 512 Siger of Brabant 514 Thomas Aquinas 522 Avicenna 31, 153 Avignon 13, 73, 291, 342 Azzo VIII of Este (marquis of Ferrara) 135, 143

B Babel. See Tower of Babel Babylonian Captivity 171 Ballata, i’ vòi che tu ritrovi Amore (“I want you to go, ballad, to seek out love”) 352–353 The Banquet. See Il convivio Baptistry of San Giovanni 59, 72, 196, 230, 406 Bardi, Simone de’ 7, 361, 391 Baron’s War (England) 375 barratry. See graft Bartolomeo della Scala 12, 14, 212 Beatrice 5–8, 159, 199, 230, 233 La commedia 22–24, 26–27 Il convivio 250, 259, 261–264 Di donne io vidi una gentile schiera 325 La dispietata mente 317 Lo doloroso amor che mi conduce 321 Epistles 285 Inferno 29, 34 Io sono stato con Amore insieme 346 Ne le man vostre, gentil donna mia 322–323 Onde venite voi così pensose? 324 Paradiso 173–179, 181–185, 187–189, 191, 194–197, 199–201, 204, 207, 208, 213, 214, 217, 219, 222–229, 231, 232, 235–244 Per quella via che la bellezza corre 326 Folco Portinari 504 Purgatorio 97, 110, 165–172 Un dì si venne a me malinconia 325 La Vita nuova 349–362

Bede the Venerable, Saint 192, 379, 514 Belacqua 99, 108, 391–392 Bella (Gabriella degli Abati) 380, 392 Bello, Geri del 68, 84, 392, 437 Benedict XI (pope) 12, 212, 284 Benedict of Nursia, Saint 200–201, 220, 245, 389, 392–393, 448 Benevento, Battle of 4, 98, 463, 479, 505 Ben ti faranno il nodo Salamone (“Partridge breasts, young bicci, will truss you in Solomon’s knot”) 334 Benvenuto da Imola 21, 393–394 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint 45, 96, 240–242, 244, 246–247 Bertran de Born 68, 394 allegory 381 Arnaut Daniel 387 Geri del Bello 392 Dante Alighieri 12 De vulgari eloquentia 369 Giraut de Bornelh 458 Inferno 27, 28, 68, 83 Bianchi 394–396 Boniface VIII 400 Betto Brunelleschi 401 Campo Piceno 410 Guido Cavalcanti 418 Vieri de’ Cerchi 419–420 Charles of Valois 422 Ciacco 423 Dante Alighieri 4, 10–12, 15 Corso Donati 436 Epistles 284 Florence 443 Focaccia 444 Vanni Fucci 450 Gianni degla Alfani 454 Guelph 461 Inferno 37, 39 Alessio Interminei 470 Io sono stato con Amore insieme 345 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Neri 491 Francesco Petrarch 500 Philip IV the Fair 502 Purgatorio 127, 143 Tuscany 523 Bible 43, 286, 289, 304 Bicci novel, figliuol di non so cui (“Young Bicci, son of I don’t know who”) 334

Index 553 Black Guelphs. See Neri blasphemy 43, 48, 53, 65 blindness 126, 130, 232 Boccaccio, Giovanni 396–397 Cecco Angiolieri 382–383 Filippo Argenti degli Adimari 384–385 Benvenuto da Imola 393–394 Ciacco 423 Guido delle Colonne 426 La commedia 21, 23 Dante Alighieri 15, 17 De monarchia 297 Eclogues 281 Florence 444 Fortune 445 Francesca da Rimini 447 Lano of Siena 477 Corrado II Malaspina 483 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Francesco Petrarch 500, 501 Michael Scott 513 Tuscany 523 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 Bocca degli Abati 88, 91–92, 106, 397 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus 397–399 Albertus Magnus 379 Anselm of Canterbury 383 La commedia 27 Il convivio 250–252 Dante Alighieri 6, 8 Fortune 445 Paradiso 192, 202, 205 Purgatorio 127, 132 Siger of Brabant 514 Bonagiunta, Orbicciani da Lucca 399 Dante Alighieri 7 Dolce stil novo 434 Forese Donati 437 Giacomo da Lentino 454 Guido Guinizelli 463 Inferno 61 Purgatorio 138, 150–151 La Vita nuova 354 Bonaventure, Saint 399–400 Anselm of Canterbury 383 Boniface VIII 401 Dante Alighieri 8 Saint Dominic 435 Francis of Assisi 448 Joachim of Fiore 473 Paradiso 193–194, 204–205

Siger of Brabant 514 Taddeo d’Alderotto of Bologna 519 Boniface VIII (pope) 400–401 Bianchi 394, 395 Cacciaguida 405 Celestine V 419 Vieri de’ Cerchi 419–420 Charles of Valois 422 Ciacco 423 Clement V 425–426 Dante Alighieri 4, 9–12 De monarchia 297 Corso Donati 436 Epistles 287 Florence 443 Francis of Assisi 448 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Giovanna 457 Guido da Montefeltro 461–462 Hugh Capet 469 Inferno 30, 39, 60, 67, 71–73, 82 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 483 Neri 491 Oderisi of Gubbio 495 Paradiso 181, 191, 212, 220, 225 Saint Peter 499 Philip IV the Fair 501–502 Purgatorio 106, 131, 135, 143, 151, 170 Bonifazio de’ Fieschi (archbishop of Ravenna) 138 Book of Special Grace (Hackeborn) 162–163 Branca d’Oria 89, 377, 401 Briareus 70, 117, 123 Bride of Christ 192, 203, 225, 240 Brunelleschi, Betto 401–402 Brunetto Latini 6, 55, 402 Francesco d’Accorso 373 Cacciaguida 405 La commedia 24 Dante Alighieri 6 Detto d’amore 431 Dionysius the Areopagite 433 Fiesole 440 Il Fiore 441 Florence 442 Giotto di Bondone 457 Inferno 28, 49–50 Justinian I 476 Manfred 485 Messer Brunetto, questa pulzelletta 335

Nimrod 493 Paradiso 210, 221 Purgatorio 149, 151 Verona 528 Bruni, Leonardo 402–403 Brutus, Marcus Junius 403 Gaius Julius Caesar 408 Cassius 414 Marcus Tullius Cicero 423 Horace 468 Inferno 90 Judas Iscariot 475 Buiamonte, Giovanni 51, 403–404, 508 Buonconte da Montefeltro 109, 404 Arezzo 384 Battle of Campaldino 410 Inferno 82 Jacopo del Cassero of Fano 471 Lano of Siena 477 Purgatorio 100, 109 Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti 3, 68, 196, 211 Buoso da Duera 88, 404

C Cacciaguida 405–406 Alighiero di Bellincione d’Alighiero 380 Bianchi 396 Boniface VIII 401 Can Grande della Scala 411 Vieri de’ Cerchi 420 Ciacco 423 Il convivio 254 Dante Alighieri 4 Epistles 284 Fiesole 440 Florence 442 Ghibelline 452 Giano della Bella 455 Godfrey of Bouillon 458 Henry VII of Luxembourg 467 Judas Maccabeus 482 Neri 491 Paradiso 195–197, 208–209 Purgatorio 110 Caccianemico, Venedico 59, 71, 406 Cacus 65, 406–407 Caesar, Gaius Julius 407–408 Alexander the Great 380 Marcus Junius Brutus 403 Cassius 414 Cato of Utica 415–416

Marcus Tullius Cicero 423 Il convivio 274 Fourth Eclogue 446 Godfrey of Bouillon 458 Horace 468 Inferno 31, 52 Judas Iscariot 475 Lucan 479 Lucrece 480 Ovid 496 Paradiso 178, 186 Purgatorio 133, 134 Caiaphas, Joseph 63–64, 408–409, 475 Cain 119, 128 Calixtus I (pope) 234–235 Calliope 97, 104 Cammino, Gherardo da 409 Campaldino, Battle of 409–410 Cecco Angiolieri 382 Arezzo 384 Buonconte da Montefeltro 404 Vieri de’ Cerchi 419 Dante Alighieri 7 Corso Donati 436 Florence 443 Ghibelline 453 Giano della Bella 455 Guelph 461 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 483 Purgatorio 100 Nino Visconti 529 Campo Piceno 410, 484 Can Grande della Scala 410–411 allegory 381 La commedia 22 Cunizza da Romano 429 Dante Alighieri 14–15 Epistles 284, 295–296 Inferno 33 Paradiso 190, 197, 212, 214 Purgatorio 134 Quaestio de aqua et terra 309 Michael Scott 513 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 Verona 528 canzone 411 Orbicciani da Lucca Bonagiunta 399 Guido Cavalcanti 417 Charles Martel 420 Cino da Pistoia 424 Il convivio 250 Dante Alighieri 7, 12

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canzone (continued) De vulgari eloquentia 363, 366, 367 Dolce stil novo 434 Paradiso 180 Purgatorio 98, 106 Rime 312–313 Capaneus 48, 53, 411–413 Capaneus the Blasphemer 49 Capocchio 69, 85, 373, 413, 492 Cardinale, il 413 cardinal virtues 105, 113, 160, 165, 168 Casella 98, 106, 250, 369, 414 Casentino 118, 127 Cassius Longinus, Gaius 414–415 Marcus Junius Brutus 403 Gaius Julius Caesar 408 Marcus Tullius Cicero 423 Horace 468 Inferno 90 Judas Iscariot 475 Catalano dei Malavolti 63–64, 415, 478 Catalano di Guido di Ostia. See Catalano dei Malavolti Cato of Utica 415–416 Marcus Junius Brutus 403 Gaius Julius Caesar 408 Casella 414 Il convivio 250, 280 De monarchia 302 Lucrece 480 Purgatorio 97, 98, 105 Cavalcando l’altrier per un cammino (“As I rode out one day not long ago”) 351 Cavalcanti, Cavalcante dei 416 Guido Cavalcanti 418 Il convivio 262 Cunizza da Romano 429 Inferno 42–43, 46 Paradiso 190 Purgatorio 123 Cavalcanti, Francesco dei 66, 79, 417, 505 Cavalcanti, Guido 417–418 Cecco Angiolieri 382 Bianchi 395 Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti 416 Francesco dei Cavalcanti 417 Cino da Pistoia 424 Il convivio 256 Dante Alighieri 5–6, 10 De vulgari eloquentia 368, 411 Dolce stil novo 434

Lo doloroso amor che mi conduce 321 Corso Donati 436 E’ m’increse di me sì duramente 323 Florence 443 Dino Frescobaldi 449 Ghibelline 453 Gianni degla Alfani 454 Guido, i’vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io 318 Guido Guinizelli 463 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Inferno 42–43, 46 Lapo Gianni 477, 478 Neri 491 Onde venite voi così pensose? 324 Purgatorio 117, 123, 133, 138, 162 Rime 312 Sonar bracchetti e cacciatori aizzare 318 sonnet 515–516 La Vita nuova 351, 354, 356, 357 The Celestial Hierarchy (Dionysius the Areopagite) 192 Celestine V (pope) 30, 400, 418–419, 461 Cenni de Pepo. See Cimabue, Giovanni centaurs 52, 53, 65, 139, 152 Cerchi, Vieri de’ 4, 410, 419–420, 436 Cerebus 36, 36 charity 105, 113, 126, 148, 165 Charlemagne 170, 186, 213, 306 Charles (count of Valois) 13, 422 Simone de’ Bardi 391 Bianchi 395, 396 Boniface VIII 400 Vieri de’ Cerchi 420 Dante Alighieri 11, 13 De vulgari eloquentia 369 Corso Donati 436 Florence 443 Henry VII of Luxembourg 466 Hugh Capet 469 Inferno 78 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 483 Neri 491 Paradiso 212 Philip IV the Fair 501–502 Purgatorio 135, 143, 151, 170

Charles I of Anjou (king of Naples and Sicily) 420–421 Buoso da Duera 404 Dante Alighieri 5 Ghibelline 453 Guelph 461 Guido Guerra 462–463 Hugh Capet 469 Inferno 88 Loderingo degli Andalò 479 Manfred 484–485 Nicholas III 492 Opizzo d’Este 495 Paradiso 180, 189 Provenzan Salvani 505 Purgatorio 98, 102, 111, 135, 143 Romeo di Villeneuve 509, 510 Sapia of Siena 512 Sordello 516 Thomas Aquinas 522 William VII 530 Charles II of Anjou (king of Naples) Charles Martel 420 Charles of Valois 422 Il convivio 272 Paradiso 179, 180, 186– 187, 189, 216 Purgatorio 135, 143 Charles Martel (Frankish ruler) 420 Charles of Anjou 421 Il convivio 256 Dante Alighieri 9 Inferno 33 Paradiso 180, 188–189 Robert of Anjou 509 Rudolph of Hapsburg 510 Charles Robert (king of Hungary) 190 Charon 30, 106, 377 Chaucer, Geoffrey 125, 247, 268 cherubim 114, 173, 236, 258 Chi guarderà già mai sanza paura (“Who will ever look without fear”) 329 Chiron (centaur) 47 Chi udisse tossir la malfatata (“Anyone who heard the coughing”) 333–334 Christianity 67, 303 Chrysostom, Saint John 194, 205 Church Militant 156, 169, 208, 220, 223 Church Triumphant 156, 164, 222, 227, 240

Ciacco 422–423 Filippo Argenti degli Adimari 385 Bianchi 396 Vieri de’ Cerchi 420 Farinata degli Uberti 440 Florence 443 Inferno 36–37, 39–40 Mosca de’ Lamberti 487 Neri 491 Tegghiaio Aldobrandi 520 Ciampolo 62 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 423 Augustine of Hippo 388 Leonardo Bruni 403 Cassius 415 Cato of Utica 415 Il convivio 250 Dante Alighieri 6 De monarchia 302 Epistles 294 Fiesole 440 Inferno 82 Livy 478 Francesco Petrarch 501 Purgatorio 126 Pythagoras 506 Thaïs 521 Cimabue, Giovanni 117, 155, 424, 456, 523 Cincinnatus 209, 271 Cino da Pistoia 424–425 Giovanni Boccaccio 396 Dante Alighieri 6, 12 Degno fa voi trovare ogni tesoro 346–347 De vulgari eloquentia 368, 369 Epistles 285 I’ho veduto già senza radice 344 Io mi credea del tutto esser partito 347 Io sono stato con Amore insieme 345–346 Lapo Gianni 478 Perch’io non trovo chi meco ragioni 345 Purgatorio 155 Rime 312 Cinyras (king of Cyprus) 69 Ciò che m’incontra, ne la mente more (“Whatever might restrain me when I feel drawn”) 353 Circle of the Lustful 36 City of God (Saint Augustine) 129, 192, 229, 308 Clement IV (pope) 98–99 Clement V (pope) 425–426 Dante Alighieri 12–14 Fra Dolcino Tornielli of Novara 434–435

Index 555 Epistles 286, 287, 291 Henry VII of Luxembourg 466 Inferno 60, 68, 73 John XXII 473 Paradiso 190, 191, 216, 225, 235, 240, 243 Francesco Petrarch 500 Philip IV the Fair 502 Purgatorio 170 Robert of Anjou 509 Se vedi li occhi miei di pianger vaghi 342 Clytemnestra 118, 126 Cocytus 49, 87, 88 Colonne, Guido delle 364, 426, 433 Color d’Amore e di pietà sembianti (“Color of love, expression of compassion”) 358 La commedia (The Divine Comedy) 21–27 Achilles 374 Adam 374 Adrian V 376 The Aeneid 376 Aristotle 386 Arnaut Daniel 387 Arno 388 Belacqua 391 Benvenuto da Imola 394 Bianchi 395–396 Giovanni Boccaccio 396, 397 Branca d’Oria 401 Brunetto Latini 402 Giovanni Buiamonte 404 Buoso da Duera 404 Can Grande della Scala 411 il Cardinale 413 Guido Cavalcanti 417 Vieri de’ Cerchi 420 Charles of Valois 422 Constantine the Great 427 Il convivio 249, 250 Cunizza da Romano 428 Dante Alighieri 13–16 King David 431 Dionysius the Areopagite 433 Dolce stil novo 434 Forese Donati 437 Epistles 293, 296 Fiesole 440 Il Fiore 441 Francis of Assisi 448 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Ghibelline 453 Giacomo da Santo Andrea 454

Giovanna 457 Gregory the Great 460 Guelph 461 Guido Novello da Polenta 463 Henry VII of Luxembourg 467 Alessio Interminei 470 James the Apostle 472 John the Apostle 474 Judas Iscariot 475 Lucan 480 Lucrece 480 Saint Lucy 481 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 483 Muhammad 489 Neri 491 Oderisi of Gubbio 495 Paulus Orosius 496 Saint Peter 499 Philip IV the Fair 502 Donati Piccarda 437 Jacopo Rusticucci 511 symbolic structure of 21 terza rima 520 Thomas Aquinas 521–522 Trajan 523 Ugolino della Gherardesca 526 Michel Zanche 531 Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (Macrobius) 221 Com più v fere amor co’suio vincastri (“The more love strikes you with his rods”) 315–316 confession 21, 96, 114–115, 167 Confessions (Saint Augustine) 251, 360 Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate (“You join with other ladies to make sport”) 353 Conrad III (Holy Roman Emperor) 4, 196, 209 Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius) 8 La commedia 27 Il convivio 250–252, 259 Inferno 34, 37 Paradiso 192, 219, 221 Purgatorio 127, 141, 148 La Vita nuova 349, 353 Constance, Empress 177, 183, 184, 426–427 Constantine the Great 427–428 King David 431 De monarchia 304 Inferno 60, 73 Paradiso 185, 199, 217

Saint Peter 499 Sylvester I 517–518 contemplation 140, 157, 168, 245, 301 contrapasso 28, 34, 71, 75, 83–85, 90, 93 contrition 86, 108, 109, 114 Il convivio (The Banquet) 249–281, 253 Adam 374 Alexander the Great 380 Aristotle 386 Augustine of Hippo 389 Bertran de Born 394 Boethius 399 Gaius Julius Caesar 408 Gherardo da Cammino 409 Charles Martel 420 Marcus Tullius Cicero 423 Dante Alighieri 12–13 King David 431 De monarchia 297 De vulgari eloquentia 362, 363, 411 Dionysius the Areopagite 433 Doglia mi reca ne lo core ardire 343 Il Fiore 441 Frederick II of Swabia 448 Guido Guinizelli 464 Homer 467 Inferno 56 Lucan 480 Paulus Orosius 496 Paradiso 180, 237 Plato 504 Purgatorio 98, 106, 130– 131, 157, 164 Pythagoras 506 Rime 312 Rudolph of Hapsburg 510 Seneca 514 Taddeo d’Alderotto of Bologna 519 Thomas Aquinas 522 Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute 341 Corinthians, second book of 141, 294 Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro (“I want to be as harsh in my speech as this fair stone is in her behaviour”) 338–340 Council of Lyons 96, 143 creation 188, 201, 226, 238 Crucifixion 195 Inferno 51 Ne le man vostre, gentil donna mia 322–323

Paradiso 179, 186, 187 Purgatorio 112, 113, 126 La Vita nuova 356 Cunizza da Romano 180, 190, 428–429, 445, 457, 516 Cur deus homo (“Why God Became Man”) (Saint Anselm of Canterbury) 188 Currado da Palazzo 120, 131 Cyclops 282, 283 Cyrus of Persia 117, 125

D Daniel, book of 53–54, 137, 148 Dante Alighieri vii–ix, 3, 3–18, 8, 10, 16, 18, 23, 32, 77, 230, 233, 456 Dante da Maiano 313–315 David, King 430–431 Constantine the Great 427 Il convivio 271 Epistles 289 Godfrey of Bouillon 458 Judas Maccabeus 482 Paradiso 198–199 Purgatorio 116, 121, 124 De amicitia (“On Friendship”) (Cicero) 126, 259 De anima (Aristotle) 133, 237, 272 De Bello Troiano (Dictys Cretensis) 373 De contemplatione (Richard of Saint Victor) 192 Decretum (Gratian) 192 De excidio Troiae (Dares Phrygius) 373 De gli occhi de la mia donna si move (“From my dear lady’s eyes there comes a light”) 322 Degno fa voi trovare ogni tesoro (“Your sweet and clear voice makes you worthy”) 346–347 Deh, ragioniamo insieme un poco, amore (“Come, love, let’s talk together a little”) 319 Deh, Violetta, che in ombra d’Amore (“Ah Violetta, you who so suddenly appeared to my eyes in love’s shadow”) 321 Deh peregrini che pensosi andate (“Ah, pilgrims, moving pensively along”) 359 De inventione (Cicero) 6 De monarchia (Monarchy) 297–309 Alexander the Great 380 Aristotle 386

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De monarchia (continued) Augustine of Hippo 389 Boethius 398–399 Gaius Julius Caesar 408 Cato of Utica 416 Marcus Tullius Cicero 423 La commedia 22 Constantine the Great 428 Il convivio 249, 278 Dante Alighieri 13 King David 431 Epistles 286 Fortune 445 Fourth Eclogue 446 Henry VII of Luxembourg 467 Inferno 33 Livy 478 Paulus Orosius 496 Paradiso 214 Purgatorio 130–131 Sylvester I 518 Thomas Aquinas 522 De officiis (Cicero) 82 De re publica (Cicero) 221 Descent on the Monster 51 Desiderus (Lombard king) 186 De symbolo ad catechumenos (Saint Augustine) 147 Detto d’Amore 431–432, 440 De vita Caesarum (“Life of Caesar”) (Suetonius) 154 De vulgari eloquentia (Eloquence in the Vernacular) 362–369 Adam 374 Alexander the Great 380 Arezzo 384 Arnaut Daniel 387 Bertran de Born 394 Orbicciani da Lucca Bonagiunta 399 Cino da Pistoia 425 Guido delle Colonne 426 La commedia 21 Il convivio 250, 251 Dante Alighieri 12 Doglia mi reca ne lo core ardire 343 Florence 441 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Giacomo da Lentino 454 Giraut de Bornelh 458 Guido Guinizelli 464 Horace 469 I’ho veduto già senza radice 344 Lapo Gianni 477–478 Livy 478 Lucan 480 Nimrod 493 Paulus Orosius 496 Paradiso 234

Peire d’Alvernhe 498 Francesco Petrarch 501 Purgatorio 150, 155 Rime 312–313 Sordello 516 Tuscany 524 Verona 528 Diana 139, 154, 185 Dido 432 The Aeneid 376, 377 Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro 339–340 Inferno 35 Ovid 497 Purgatorio 144 Di donne io vidi una gentile schiera (“Last All Saint’s Day I saw a lovely group of ladies”) 325 Diniz (king of Portugal) 216 Diomedes 412, 432–433, 515, 526 Dionysius the Areopagite 192, 202, 205, 226, 433, 460 Dis 41–45, 87 La dispietata mente, che pur mira (“Pitiless memory, ever gazing back”) 317 The Divine Comedy. See La commedia divine grace 22, 33, 44–45, 110 divine love 27, 34, 90, 168 divine wisdom La commedia 27 Il convivio 268 Inferno 34, 59 Paradiso 181, 201, 203, 232 Purgatorio 168, 171 Doglia mi reca ne lo core ardire (“Grief brings boldness to my heart”) 342–344 Dolce stil novo 433–434 Cecco Angiolieri 382 Orbicciani da Lucca Bonagiunta 399 Guido Cavalcanti 417 Cino da Pistoia 424 La commedia 23 Il convivio 257, 270 Dante Alighieri 6, 9, 13 Epistles 285 Dino Frescobaldi 449 Giacomo da Lentino 454 Gianni degla Alfani 454 Guido Guinizelli 463 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Lapo Gianni 477 Purgatorio 133, 138, 150–151 sonnet 515 La Vita nuova 354

Dolcino Tornielli of Novara, Fra 68, 434–435 Le dolci rime d’amor (“The tender rhymes of love”) 250, 269–270 Lo doloroso amor che mi conduce (“The sorrowful love that leads me to final death”) 321–322 Dominic, Saint 435 Saint Bonaventure 400 Giovanni Cimabue 424 Folquet de Marseille 445 Francis of Assisi 448 Paradiso 192, 194, 204–205 Taddeo d’Alderotto of Bologna 519 Thomas Aquinas 522 Dominions 173, 237 Domitian persecution 137, 234 Donati, Buoso de’ 65, 65–66, 79 Donati, Corso 435–436 Simone de’ Bardi 391 Bianchi 395 Betto Brunelleschi 401 Battle of Campaldino 410 Guido Cavalcanti 418 Charles of Valois 422 Dante Alighieri 7, 9, 10 Forese Donati 436 Gemma Donati 437 Florence 443 Giano della Bella 455 Inferno 78 Neri 491 Paradiso 183 Donati Piccarda 437 Purgatorio 138, 143, 151 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 Donati, Forese 436–437 Ben ti faranno il nodo Salamone 334 Bicci novel, figliuol di non so cui 334 Betto Brunelleschi 401 Chi udisse tossir la malfatata 333–334 Corso Donati 435–436 Gemma Donati 437 Inferno 86 Paradiso 183 Donati Piccarda 437 Purgatorio 137–138, 149, 151 Rime 312 Donati, Gemma 437 Alighiero di Bellincione d’Alighiero 380 Dante Alighieri 4, 5

Corso Donati 435 Forese Donati 436 Epistles 283 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Mosca de’ Lamberti 487 Donati Piccarda 437 Ravenna 507 Donati, Piccarda 437–438 Corso Donati 435–436 Forese Donati 436 Paradiso 174, 176–177, 183–185 Purgatorio 138 Donation of Constantine 73, 110, 169, 199, 304, 306–308 Donatus 194, 205 donna gentile 358, 359, 361 “Donna me prega” (“A Lady Asks Me”) (Guido Cavalcanti) 133, 256, 262, 270 Donna pietosa e di novella etate (“A lady of tender years, compassionate”) 355 Donne ch’avete intelletto d’Amore (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”) 263, 268, 353, 354, 358, 361, 362 Due donna in cima de la mente mia (“Two women have come to the summit of my mind”) 333

E eagle 103, 103, 114, 197–198, 215 Earthly Paradise 21, 96, 161 earthquake 51–52, 75, 144 Easter 114, 126 Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Bede) 192 Eclogues (Dante) 281–283 Eclogues (Virgil) 282 Edward I (king of England) 216, 373, 375, 426, 466 Eliot, T. S. viii Eloquence in the Vernacular. See De vulgari eloquentia E’ m’increse di me sì duramente (“I pity myself so intensely”) 323 Empyrean 173, 176, 181, 239, 239–248, 294 envy 87, 118, 119, 125, 128 Epicurean heretics 42, 45–46, 262 Epicurus 45–46, 272 Epistles 283–297 Era venuta ne la mente mia (“Into my mind had come the gracious image”) 358

Index 557 Eripyle 124, 184 Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante (Boccaccio) 17 Ethics (Aristotle) 6, 269–270, 274–275, 280, 298, 300 Etymologiae (Isidore of Seville) 192 Eucharist 92, 126, 148 Eunoë, River 158, 163 Eve 112, 138, 244, 363 Everyman figure 24, 31, 45 excommunication 99, 107, 108, 143, 214 Ezzelino da Romano 47, 52, 61, 190

F Fables (Aesop) 6 Fabricius Luscianus, Caius 135, 142, 271 Faenza, Italy 67, 377, 508, 519 faith 105, 113, 164–165, 165, 229 Fano 68, 100 Farinata degli Uberti 42, 439–440 Arbia 384 il Cardinale 413 Catalano dei Malavolti 415 Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti 416 Guido Cavalcanti 418 Il convivio 262 Florence 443 Ghibelline 452–453 Guelph 461 Inferno 28, 38–39, 42, 46 Loderingo degli Andalò 479 Mosca de’ Lamberti 487 Provenzan Salvani 505 Purgatorio 110, 122–123 Ferdinand IV (king of León and Castile) 216 Fiesole 55, 287, 440, 441–442 Fiore, Il 431, 440–441 fire 156, 174–176 Firenze. See Florence Florence 441–444 Master Adam 375 Alessandro and Napoleone degli Alberti 378 Omberto Aldobrandesco 379 Alighiero di Bellincione d’Alighiero 380 Arbia 384 Arezzo 384 Filippo Argenti degli Adimari 384

Arno 388 Simone de’ Bardi 391 Belacqua 391 Geri del Bello 392 Benvenuto da Imola 394 Bianchi 394–396 Giovanni Boccaccio 396–397 Boniface VIII 400 Betto Brunelleschi 401 Brunetto Latini 402 Leonardo Bruni 402–403 Buonconte da Montefeltro 404 Cacciaguida 405–406 Battle of Campaldino 409–410 Campo Piceno 410 Catalano dei Malavolti 415 Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti 416 Francesco dei Cavalcanti 417 Guido Cavalcanti 418 Celestine V 419 Vieri de’ Cerchi 419 Charles of Valois 422 Giovanni Cimabue 424 Cino da Pistoia 424 city government of 9–10 La commedia 21 Il convivio 249 Cunizza da Romano 429 Dante Alighieri 3–4 De monarchia 297 De vulgari eloquentia 364, 369 Forese Donati 437 Gemma Donati 437 Epistles 287, 289, 292 Farinata degli Uberti 439 Fiesole 440 Focaccia 444 Folquet de Marseille 445 Vanni Fucci 450 Gianni degla Alfani 454 Gianni Schicchi 455 Giano della Bella 455 Giotto di Bondone 456 Giovanna 457 Guelph 460–461 Guido da Montefeltro 461 Guido Guerra 462 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Henry VII of Luxembourg 466–467 Hugh Capet 469 Inferno 42, 50, 53, 56–57, 63, 66, 71, 80 John the Baptist 475 Lapo Gianni 477

Loderingo degli Andalò 479 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 482–483 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Mosca de’ Lamberti 487 Neri 491 Nicholas III 492 Paradiso 209–211 Philip IV the Fair 502 Pisa 503 Folco Portinari 504 Provenzan Salvani 505 Puccio Galigai 505 Purgatorio 102, 111, 118, 127, 137, 149 Rinieri de’ Paolucci da Calboli 508 Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila 511 Jacopo Rusticucci 511 Michael Scott 513 Tegghiaio Aldobrandi 520 Tuscany 523 Ugolino della Gherardesca 524 Verona 528 Nino Visconti 529 Flowing Light of the Godhead (Mechthild von Magdeburg) 162 Focaccia 88, 395, 444 Folquet de Marseille 180–181, 191, 444–445 foreknowledge. See prophecy Fortune 37, 40, 343, 353, 398, 445–446 Fourth Eclogue (Virgil) 446–447 La commedia 25, 26 Epistles 288, 289 Inferno 33, 74 Purgatorio 136, 147 Francesca da Rimini 447, 447 La commedia 24 Dante Alighieri 15 Galehot 451 Guido Novello da Polenta 463 Inferno 27, 35–36, 38 Paradiso 184–185 Purgatorio 109 Ravenna 507 Francis of Assisi, Saint 447–448 Augustine of Hippo 389 Benedict of Nursia 393 Saint Bonaventure 399 Giovanni Cimabue 424 Saint Dominic 435 Giotto di Bondone 456

Guido da Montefeltro 462 Inferno 67 Joachim of Fiore 473 Paradiso 192–193, 203–204 Saint Peter Damian 500 Purgatorio 122 Taddeo d’Alderotto of Bologna 519 Thomas Aquinas 522 Frederick I Barbarossa (Holy Roman Emperor) 134 Frederick II of Aragon (king of Sicily) 272 Frederick II of Swabia (Holy Roman Emperor) 448–449 Buoso da Duera 404 Gherardo da Cammino 409 Can Grande della Scala 410 il Cardinale 413 Catalano dei Malavolti 415 Charles of Anjou 420 Empress Constance 426–427 Il convivio 262, 271, 272, 278 De vulgari eloquentia 366, 411 Epistles 287 Farinata degli Uberti 439 Florence 443 Ghibelline 452 Giacomo da Lentino 453 Guelph 460–461 Inferno 48, 61 Loderingo degli Andalò 479 Corrado II Malaspina 483 Manfred 484 Opizzo d’Este 495 Paradiso 177, 183, 216 Pier delle Vigne 503 Purgatorio 131, 171 Rime 312 Michael Scott 512–513 sonnet 515 Thomas Aquinas 522 Michel Zanche 531 free will. See also will Inferno 34, 93 Paradiso 178 Purgatorio 95, 96, 130, 132, 133 Frescobaldi, Dino 449–450, 484 Fucci, Vanni 450 Cacus 407 Campo Piceno 410 Florence 443

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Fucci, Vanni (continued) Focaccia 444 Inferno 64–65, 78–80 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Paradiso 211–212 Fulcieri da Càlboli 12, 119, 127, 283 Furies 41, 44–45

G Galehot 38, 451 Ganelon 88, 213, 451, 519 Ganymede 103, 114 Garden of Eden 96, 158 Gemini 201, 221 Genesis, book of De monarchia 305–306 Epistles 287 Purgatorio 112, 114, 156 Quaestio de aqua et terra 310, 311 Gentil pensero che parla di vui (“A thought, gracious because it speaks of you”) 359 Geryon 51, 57–58 Gherardo II (abbot of San Zeno) 134 Gherardo da Camino 131, 274 Ghibelline 452–453 Francesco d’ Accorso 373 Alessandro and Napoleone degli Alberti 378 Omberto Aldobrandesco 379 Alighiero di Bellincione d’Alighiero 380 Cecco Angiolieri 382 Arbia 384 Arezzo 384 Bella 392 Geri del Bello 392 Bianchi 394 Bocca degli Abati 397 Branca d’Oria 401 Brunetto Latini 402 Buonconte da Montefeltro 404 Buoso da Duera 404 Venedico Caccianemico 406 Gherardo da Cammino 409 Battle of Campaldino 409–410 Can Grande della Scala 410 il Cardinale 413 Catalano dei Malavolti 415

Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti 416 Vieri de’ Cerchi 419 Cunizza da Romano 428 Dante Alighieri 3–4 Corso Donati 436 Epistles 288 Farinata degli Uberti 439 Fiesole 440 Florence 442–443 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Giovanna 457 Guelph 460–461 Guido da Montefeltro 461 Guido del Duca 462 Guido Guerra 462–463 Guido Guinizelli 463 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Henry VII of Luxembourg 467 Inferno 42, 63 Loderingo degli Andalò 478–479 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 482–483 Corrado II Malaspina 483 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Mosca de’ Lamberti 487 Neri 491 Nicholas III 492 Paradiso 179, 187 Pisa 503 Provenzan Salvani 505 Puccio Galigai 505 Purgatorio 127, 128 Rinieri de’ Paolucci da Calboli 508 Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila 510–511 Sapia of Siena 512 Tebaldello dei Zambrasi 519 Tegghiaio Aldobrandi 520 Tuscany 523 Ugolino della Gherardesca 524 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 Verona 528 Nino Visconti 529 William VII 530 Giacomo da Lentino 453– 454 Cecco Angiolieri 382 Orbicciani da Lucca Bonagiunta 399 Guido delle Colonne 426 De vulgari eloquentia 411 La dispietata mente 317

Dolce stil novo 434 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Lapo Gianni 477 Lo meo servente core 316 Pier delle Vigne 503 Purgatorio 138 Rime 312 sonnet 515 Giacomo da Santo Andrea 48, 454, 477 Gianni degla Alfani 454–455 Gianni Schicchi 69, 455 Giano della Bella 9, 455 Gideon 139, 152 Giotto di Bondone 424, 444, 456–457, 495, 507–508 Giovanna 356, 457, 529 Giovanni del Virgilio 16, 281–283 Giraut de Bornelh 457–458 Arnaut Daniel 387 De vulgari eloquentia 368, 369 Peire d’Alvernhe 498 Purgatorio 140, 155 Gloria Patri (“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost”) 234 gluttony 38, 132, 141, 148 God De monarchia 299, 303, 304, 308 De vulgari eloquentia 364 Epistles 287, 288, 290 Inferno 56, 74 Paradiso 173 Se vedi li occhi miei di pianger vaghi 341–342 La Vita nuova 353 Godfrey of Bouillon 197, 213, 458–459, 465 Golden Age 127, 136, 161 Golden Legend (Jacobus de Voragine) 169 Gomita of Gallura, Fra 62, 459, 529, 531 grace La commedia 21, 22 Inferno 33, 34, 44–45 Paradiso 238 Purgatorio 110, 114 graft 61–63, 75–77 Gratian 192, 202 Gregory I the Great (pope) 459–460 Benedict of Nursia 393 Paradiso 217, 226 Purgatorio 116, 121, 129, 141 Trajan 523

Gregory VII (pope) 162 Gregory X (pope) 143, 378 Griffolino da Arezzo 69, 85, 413, 460 Guelph 460–461 Alessandro and Napoleone degli Alberti 378 Omberto Aldobrandesco 379 Alighiero di Bellincione d’Alighiero 380 Cecco Angiolieri 382 Arbia 384 Arezzo 384 Filippo Argenti degli Adimari 384 Geri del Bello 392 Bocca degli Abati 397 Boniface VIII 400 Betto Brunelleschi 401 Brunetto Latini 402 Buonconte da Montefeltro 404 Venedico Caccianemico 406 Gherardo da Cammino 409 Battle of Campaldino 409–410 Campo Piceno 410 Catalano dei Malavolti 415 Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti 416 Guido Cavalcanti 418 Vieri de’ Cerchi 419 Il convivio 278 Cunizza da Romano 428 Dante Alighieri 3–4, 15 Corso Donati 435–436 Forese Donati 436 Epistles 284, 285 Farinata degli Uberti 439 Florence 442–443 Focaccia 444 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Vanni Fucci 450 Ghibelline 452–453 Gianni degla Alfani 454 Giovanna 457 Guido da Montefeltro 461 Guido del Duca 462 Guido Guerra 462–463 Guido Novello da Polenta 463 Guido Guinizelli 463 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Henry VII of Luxembourg 466–467 Inferno 42

Index 559 Alessio Interminei 470 Loderingo degli Andalò 478–479 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 482–483 Moroello III Malaspina 483–484 Manfred 485 Marco Lombardo 486 Mosca de’ Lamberti 487 Neri 491 Nicholas III 492 Opizzo d’Este 495 Paradiso 179, 187 Francesco Petrarch 500 Philip IV the Fair 502 Pia de’ Tolomei 502 Donati Piccarda 437 Provenzan Salvani 505 Puccio Galigai 505 Purgatorio 127, 128 Rinieri de’ Paolucci da Calboli 508 Robert of Anjou 509 Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila 510 Jacopo Rusticucci 511 Sapia of Siena 512 Tebaldello dei Zambrasi 519 Tegghiaio Aldobrandi 519–520 Tuscany 523 Ugolino della Gherardesca 524 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 Nino Visconti 529 William VII 530 Guercio. See Cavalcanti, Francesco dei Guido, i’vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io (“Guido, I wish that you and Lapo and I”) 318 Guido da Batifolle 14, 289 Guido da Castel 120, 131 Guido da Montefeltro 461–462 Boniface VIII 401 Buonconte da Montefeltro 404 Il convivio 277 Inferno 67, 81–82 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 483 Purgatorio 100, 109 Ravenna 507 Rinieri de’ Paolucci da Calboli 508 Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila 511

Guido del Duca 462 Arezzo 384 Arno 388 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 483 Purgatorio 119, 126–128 Rinieri de’ Paolucci da Calboli 508 Tuscany 524 Guido Guerra 50, 462–463, 511, 520 Guido Novello da Polenta 15, 16, 437, 447, 463, 507 Guillaume de Nogaret 143–144 Guinevere 36, 38, 210 Guinizelli, Guido 7, 463–464 Amore e’l cor gentil sono una cosa 324 Arnaut Daniel 387 Orbicciani da Lucca Bonagiunta 399 Chi guarderà già mai sanza paura 329 Il convivio 257 Dante Alighieri 6 De vulgari eloquentia 368, 411 Dolce stil novo 434 Giraut de Bornelh 458 Inferno 38 Paradiso 210, 233 Purgatorio 117, 138, 140, 154–155 sonnet 515 La Vita nuova 354 Guiscard, Robert 197, 213, 464–465 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Arezzo 384 Orbicciani da Lucca Bonagiunta 399 Guido Cavalcanti 417 Dante Alighieri 6 De vulgari eloquentia 368–369 Dolce stil novo 434 Dino Frescobaldi 449 Giacomo da Lentino 453 Guido Guinizelli 463 Purgatorio 138, 140, 156 Rime 312 sonnet 515 Tuscany 523 La Vita nuova 352

H Hadrian (emperor of Rome) 234 Haman 120, 131

“Harrowing of Hell” Inferno 30, 34, 45, 75 Paradiso 191, 234 Purgatorio 113 Heaven 354, 356–358 Heaven, spheres of. See spheres of Heaven Hebrew language 234, 364, 365 Hecuba (queen of Troy) 69, 144 Helice 139, 154 Hell vii, 22, 28–35. See also Inferno Henry (duke of Cornwall) 47 Henry I the Fat (king of Navarre) 102, 111 Henry II (king of England) 68, 83, 394 Henry II of Lusignan (king of Cyprus) 198, 216 Henry III (king of England) 466 Guido delle Colonne 426 Purgatorio 102, 111, 112 Romeo di Villeneuve 510 Sordello 516 Henry IV (Holy Roman Emperor) 162 Henry VI (Holy Roman Emperor) 177, 183 Henry VII of Luxembourg (Holy Roman Emperor) 466–467 Gaius Julius Caesar 408 Can Grande della Scala 410 Cino da Pistoia 424 Clement V 426 La commedia 22 Il convivio 271 Dante Alighieri 13–14 De monarchia 297, 298, 301 Epistles 286–289 Florence 441 Ghibelline 453 Guelph 461 Inferno 33 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Niccolò de’ Salimbeni 492 Paradise 243 Paradiso 191, 240 Purgatorio 142, 171 Robert of Anjou 509 Se vedi li occhi miei di pianger vaghi 342 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 Hezekiah 124, 199, 217 Hippodamia 47, 152

Historia adversus paganos (Orosius) 379 Historianum adversus Paganos libri VII (Orosius) 304 Historia scholastica (Peter Comestor) 206, 374 Holofernes 117, 125 Holy Land 181, 196, 216 Holy Roman Emperor 186, 308. See also specific emperors Holy Roman Empire 3, 33, 54 Holy Spirit 164, 173, 206 Holy Trinity 21, 94, 116, 248 Homer 467–468 Achilles 373 Diomedes 432 Horace 468 Inferno 31 Lucan 480 Ovid 497 Publius Papinus Statius 517 Ulysses 526 Homilies on the Gospel (Saint Gregory) 237 homosexual love 139–140, 154–155 Honorius III (pope) 192, 204 hope 105, 113, 164–165, 165, 229 Horace 31, 368, 468–469, 480, 497 Hugh Capet 469 Bianchi 396 Boniface VIII 401 Charles of Anjou 421 Charles of Valois 422 Florence 443 Neri 491 Paradiso 189 Philip IV the Fair 502 Purgatorio 135, 142, 143 Hugh of Saint Victor 193, 205 human reason 22, 98, 107, 145, 182 hypocrisy 63–64, 77–78 Hyrodes (king of the Parthians) 144

I Iacopo da Lentini. See Giacomo da Lentino I’ho veduto già senza radice (“I have seen a rootless tree”) 344–345 Iliad (Homer) 373 I’ mi son pargoletta bella e nova (“I am a young girl, lovely and marvelous”) 328 Incarnation 176, 248 incontinence 21, 32, 35–40, 135, 141, 146

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Critical Companion to Dante

In exitu Israel de Aegypto (“When Israel came out of Egypt”) (hymn) 98, 105 Inferno 27–95, 29, 30, 32, 36, 41, 42, 49, 51, 55, 59, 62, 65, 68, 70, 72, 77, 83, 87, 91, 377, 385 Abbagliato 373 Francesco d’ Accorso 373 Achilles 374 Adam 374 The Aeneid 376 Friar Alberigo 377 Alexander the Great 380 allegory 381 Anastasius II 382 Antaeus 384 Arbia 384 Arezzo 384 Aristotle 386 Arno 388 Averroës 389 Bella 392 Bertran de Born 394 Bianchi 396 Giovanni Boccaccio 397 Boniface VIII 401 Branca d’Oria 401 Brunetto Latini 402 Marcus Junius Brutus 403 Giovanni Buiamonte 403–404 Buonconte da Montefeltro 404 Cacciaguida 405 Venedico Caccianemico 406 Gaius Julius Caesar 408 Joseph Caiaphas 409 Battle of Campaldino 410 Campo Piceno 410 Can Grande della Scala 411 Capaneus 412–413 Capocchio 413 il Cardinale 413 Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti 416 Guido Cavalcanti 418 Celestine V 419 Ciacco 422–423 Marcus Tullius Cicero 423 Clement V 426 La commedia 21, 30 compound fraud 88–95 Constantine the Great 428 Cunizza da Romano 428 Dante Alighieri 13 King David 431 De monarchia 304 Dido 432

Fra Dolcino Tornielli of Novara 435 Eclogues 281 Epistles 285 Farinata degli Uberti 440 Fiesole 440 Florence 442, 443 Fortune 445 Francesca da Rimini 447 Francis of Assisi 448 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Dino Frescobaldi 449 Vanni Fucci 450 Galehot 451 Ganelon 451 Ghibelline 453 Giovanna 457 Fra Gomita of Gallura 459 Griffolino da Arezzo 460 Guido da Montefeltro 461 Guido Guerra 463 Guido Novello da Polenta 463 Robert Guiscard 464 Henry VII of Luxembourg 467 Horace 468 Alessio Interminei 470 Jason 472 John the Baptist 475 Judas Iscariot 475–476 Lano of Siena 477 Loderingo degli Andalò 478 Lucan 480 Lucrece 480 Saint Lucy 481 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 483 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Manfred 484 Manto 485 Medusa 487 Mosca de’ Lamberti 487 Muhammad 488–489 Neri 491 Niccolò de’ Salimbeni 492 Nicholas III 493 Nimrod 493 Paulus Orosius 496 Pier delle Vigne 503 Pisa 503 Plato 504 Puccio Galigai 505 Purgatorio 104 Ravenna 507 Rinaldo degli Scrovegni 508

Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila 511 Jacopo Rusticucci 511 Seneca 514 simple fraud 58–88 Sinon 515 sins of incontinence 35–40 sins of violence 47–58 Tebaldello dei Zambrasi 519 Thaïs 520 Theseus 521 Ugolino della Gherardesca 526 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 Ulysses 526, 527 upper Hell 28–35 Verona 528 Vexilla regis prodeunt 528–529 Nino Visconti 529 walls of Dis and the heretics 40–47 Michel Zanche 531 Innocent III (pope) 96, 192, 204 Innocent IV (pope) 375 intercessory prayer 96, 99, 108–110 Interminei, Alessio 59, 470 invidia 119, 125, 128 Io Dante a te che m’hai così chiamato (“I Dante, to who you have appealed”) 334–335 Io mi credea del tutto esser partito (“I thought, messer cino, that I had quite abandoned”) 347 Io mi senti’svegliar dentro a lo core (“I felt a sleeping spirit in my heart”) 355 Io sento sì d’Amor la gran possanza (“So much do I feel love’s mighty power”) 330–331 Io sono stato con Amore insieme (“I have been together with Love”) 285, 345–346 Io son venuto al punto de la rota (“I have come to that point on the wheel”) 335–336 Iphigenia 178, 185 Islam 31, 67, 170 Italian language viii, 251–253, 363–366 Itinerarium mentis in Deum (“Itinerary of the mind to God”) (Saint Bonaventure) 204 Ixion (king of the Lapiths) 152

J Jacob 156–157, 189 Jacopo del Cassero of Fano 100, 471, 529 James, Saint 223–224, 230 James II (king of Aragon) 216 James II (king of Majorca) 216 James the Apostle, Saint 230–231, 374, 471–472, 474, 498, 510 Jason 59, 71, 181, 472, 521 Jephthah 178, 185 Jeremiah, book of 234, 355 Jerome, Saint 96, 164, 238 Jerusalem 90, 94–97, 124, 146, 179, 187 Jesus Christ Chi guarderà già mai sanza paura 329 La commedia 27 De monarchia 300, 303, 306, 307 Epistles 286 Inferno 93 Ne le man vostre, gentil donna mia 322–323 Purgatorio 119, 164 La Vita nuova 352, 357 The Jewish War (Josephus) 148 Jews 179, 186, 187 Joachim of Fiore 194, 206, 472–473 John, book of 126, 161 John, Saint 233 John XXI (pope) 194, 225 John XXII (pope) 473–474 Leonardo Bruni 402 De monarchia 298, 301 Epistles 292 Inferno 84 Paradiso 214–215, 235 Saint Peter 499 John the Apostle, Saint 474 Adam 374 Joseph Caiaphas 409 Giovanni Cimabue 424 Giotto di Bondone 457 Inferno 59 James the Apostle 471 Paradiso 224–225, 246 Saint Peter 498 John the Baptist, Saint 474–475 Augustine of Hippo 389 Benedict of Nursia 393 Dante Alighieri 4 Corso Donati 436 Florence 442 Giotto di Bondone 457 Inferno 48

Index 561 Saint Lucy 481 Paradiso 210, 241, 245 Purgatorio 134, 137, 148, 156 Jove 53, 103, 114 Jovial Friars 63, 77, 89 Judas Iscariot 89–90, 403, 408, 414, 422, 475–476 Judgment Day 27, 154, 166, 207, 245 Judith 117, 125, 245 Jupiter 139, 214 justice Epistles 286 Inferno 35 Paradiso 65, 197–198 Purgatorio 105, 113 Se vedi li occhi miei di pianger vaghi 341–342 Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute 341 Justinian I (Byzantine emperor) 476 Cino da Pistoia 425 Dante Alighieri 15 Epistles 286 Fiesole 440 Ghibelline 453 Guelph 461 Lucrece 480 Paradiso 178–179, 185–187 Ravenna 507 Romeo di Villeneuve 509 Just Rulers 197–198 Juvenal 136, 147

K Kings, books of 124–125 Knights Templar 135, 144, 216

L Laban 156–157 Lady Philosophy La commedia 27 Il convivio 250, 260, 268 Inferno 34 Paradiso 219 Purgatorio 106, 127, 141 Lamentations 290, 291, 352, 355 Lancelot 36, 38, 210, 277 Lano of Siena 48, 454, 477 Lapo Gianni 6, 318, 477–478, 516 Lasso! Per forza di molti sospiri (“Alas! By the full force of countless sighs”) 359 Last Judgment 37, 45, 48, 52, 97, 156

late-repentant souls 100, 101, 112 Latin language 251–252, 255, 362, 364–367 Laudes creaturarum (“Canticle of the Sun”) 122 Leah 140, 156–157 “Legend of Saint Cecilia” (Chaucer) 247 Leo III (pope) 213 Leo X (pope) 18 Lethe River 90, 158, 163, 243 Limbo 30, 34–35, 97, 107 Li ochhi dolenti per pietà del core (“The eyes grieving out of pity for the heart”) 357, 358, 361 Litany of the Saints 118, 126 Livy 302, 478, 479, 480, 500 Loderingo degli Andalò 63, 415, 478–479 Lodovico (bishop of Toulouse) 189 Lo meo servente core (“May love commend to you my loyal heart”) 316 Louis VII (king of France) 209 Louis X (king of France) 190, 216 love Amor, che ne la mente mi ragiona 329–330 La commedia 21–22 Il convivio 264 Epistles 285, 286 Inferno 90 Paradiso 229 Purgatorio 105, 119, 121, 126, 129, 132, 133, 164–165 Rime 311–349 La Vita nuova 349–362 Lo vostro fermo dir fino ed orrato (“Your assured, elegant, dignified speech bears good witness”) 314 lower Paradise 176–191 Lucan 479–480 Alexander the Great 379, 380 Antaeus 384 Benvenuto da Imola 393 Cato of Utica 416 Il convivio 274 Homer 468 Horace 468 Inferno 31, 60 Ovid 497 Lucifer 117, 123, 215, 226 Lucrece 178, 480

Lucy, Saint 480–481 La commedia 26 Il convivio 269 Inferno 29, 34 John the Baptist 475 Paradiso 241, 246 Purgatorio 114 Luke, book of 142, 306 lust 31, 35–38, 132, 139, 141, 153, 154 Lycidas (Milton) 78, 235

M Macarius the Younger, Saint 200, 221 Maccabeus, Judas 213, 458, 482 Madonna, quel signor che voi portate (“Lady, that lord you bear in your eyes”) 320–321 Maghinardo. See Mainardo Pagano da Susinana Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 67, 482–483 Malaspina, Corrado II 103, 112, 212, 483, 484 Malaspina, Moroello III 483–484 Adrian V 376 Amor, da che convien pur ch’io mi doglia 348 Campo Piceno 410 Dante Alighieri 12 Degno fa voi trovare ogni tesoro 346 Epistles 285, 286 Dino Frescobaldi 449 Inferno 78–79 Corrado II Malaspina 483 Manfred 484–485 Friar Alberigo 377 Buoso da Duera 404 Catalano dei Malavolti 415 Charles of Anjou 420–421 Empress Constance 427 Dante Alighieri 4 De vulgari eloquentia 366 Farinata degli Uberti 439 Florence 443 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Ghibelline 452–453 Guido Guerra 462–463 Inferno 88 Loderingo degli Andalò 479 Opizzo d’Este 495 Pisa 503 Purgatorio 95, 98, 102, 111, 143

Romeo di Villeneuve 510 Sordello 516 William VII 530 Manto 60, 485 Mantua 60, 74, 100, 102 March of Treviso 180, 190 Marco Lombardo 130, 485–486 Gherardo da Cammino 409 Giovanna 457 Paradiso 188, 209, 221 Purgatorio 95, 120, 130–131 Margherita degli Aldobrandeschi (“Red Countess”) 11 Mars 48, 53, 195, 208 Martin IV of Tours (pope) 138 Matthew, book of De monarchia 306 Epistles 294 Inferno 77, 86 Purgatorio 96, 108, 110, 115, 119, 125, 136, 137, 141, 142, 156, 159 La Vita nuova 356 Matthew of Acquasparta 10–11, 193 Mechthild von Hackeborn, Saint 162–163 Medusa 41, 45, 113, 406, 486–487 Meleager 139, 152 Melibaeus 281, 282 Mercury 119, 179, 185 Messer Brunetto, questa pulzelletta (“Messer Brunetto, this young girl”) 335 Metamorphoses (Ovid) Epistles 285 Inferno 54, 60 Purgatorio 104, 119, 128, 144, 148, 152, 154, 155, 162 Metaphysics (Aristotle) 52, 144, 297, 299, 307 Midas (king of Phrygia) 144 Midianites 139, 152 Milan 103, 134 Minerva 166, 176, 181 Minotaur 47, 52, 53 Miserere 100, 108, 137, 148 Montaperti, Battle of Arbia 384 Geri del Bello 392 Bocca degli Abati 397 Brunetto Latini 402 Farinata degli Uberti 439 Florence 443 Ghibelline 453 Guelph 461

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Montaperti, Battle of (continued) Guido Guerra 462 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Inferno 42, 88, 92 Provenzan Salvani 505 Monte Cassino monastery 200, 220 Montecatini, Battle of 15, 149, 190, 526 Moon 177, 182–183, 310 Moralia in Job (Saint Gregory) 129 Morte villana, di pietà nemica (“Villainous death, at war with tenderness”) 351 Mosca de’ Lamberti 39, 68, 487–488 Moses 30, 241, 246 Muhammad 67–68, 435, 488–489 Musa, Mark La commedia 23 Inferno 45, 57, 77, 82, 85, 87, 90–91 Purgatorio 112, 113 Muses 88, 90, 97, 104, 175 Myrrha 69, 489–490 mysticism 175, 228, 247 Mystic Rose 240–241, 243– 244, 269

N Nebuchadnezzar (king of Babylon) 53, 125, 148, 170 Ne le man vostre, gentil donna mia (“Into your hands, my gentle lady”) 322–323 Ne li occhi porta la mia donna Amore (“The power of love borne in my lady’s eyes”) 354 Neoplatonism 132, 194, 254, 268, 310, 336 Neri 491 Bianchi 394–396 Boniface VIII 400 Betto Brunelleschi 401 Campo Piceno 410 Guido Cavalcanti 418 Vieri de’ Cerchi 419–420 Charles of Valois 422 Ciacco 423 Cino da Pistoia 424 Dante Alighieri 4, 10–12, 14, 15 Degno fa voi trovare ogni tesoro 346 Corso Donati 435–436 Forese Donati 436 Epistles 284 Florence 443

Focaccia 444 Vanni Fucci 450 Gianni degla Alfani 454 Guelph 461 Inferno 37, 39, 41, 44, 51, 79 Io sono stato con Amore insieme 345 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Donati Piccarda 437 Purgatorio 127, 143 Tuscany 523 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 New Life. See La vita nuova Niccolò da Prato, Cardinal 12, 80, 284 Niccolò de’ Salimbeni 69, 492 Nicholas, Saint 135, 142 Nicholas III (pope) 492–493 Boniface VIII 401 Clement V 426 La commedia 24 Florence 443 Ghibelline 453 Inferno 60, 72–73 Purgatorio 142 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 28, 32, 43, 46–47, 84, 184 Nimrod 493, 493–494 De vulgari eloquentia 364, 365 Inferno 70, 87 Purgatorio 117, 124 Niobe 117, 124 nobility 268–270, 274–279 Non mi poirano già mai fare ammenda (“Never can my eyes make amends to me”) 317–318

O Oderisi of Gubbio 495 Giovanni Cimabue 424 Ghibelline 453 Giotto di Bondone 456 Provenzan Salvani 505 Purgatorio 117, 122–123, 155 O dolci rime che parlando andate (“O you sweet poems that go about speaking of that noble lady”) 328 Odysseus. See Ulysses Oeneus (king of Calydon) 152 Old Man of Crete 49, 53–54, 127 Oltra la spera che più larga fira (“Beyond the sphere that makes the widest round”) 256, 359

On Christian Doctrine (Augustine) 308 Onde venite voi così pensose? (“Where do you come from so sorrowfully?”) 324 On Generation (Aristotle) 266 Opizzo d’Este 495–496 Orestes 118, 126 Organon (Aristotle) 207 Orosius, Paulus 496 Alexander the Great 379, 380 Augustine of Hippo 389 De monarchia 304 Livy 478 Paradiso 192, 202, 205–206 Ottakar II (king of Bohemia) 102, 111 Ottaviano degli Ubaldini. See Cardinale, il Ovid 496–497 Cacus 407 Epistles 285 Homer 468 Horace 468 Inferno 31, 54, 60 Jason 472 Lucan 480 Medusa 486 Myrrha 489 Purgatorio 104 Savere e cortesia 315 O voi che per la via d’Amor passate (“O ye who travel on the road of love”) 350

P Padua 12, 365 Paola da Rimini 35–36, 38 papacy Dante Alighieri 3 De monarchia 301, 305–308 Inferno 33 Paradiso 197–199, 220 Purgatorio 120, 130, 131 Paradise 54, 114, 364, 365 Paradiso 172–249, 177, 193, 195, 198–200, 230, 232, 233, 239, 241 Adam 374 Augustine of Hippo 389 Benedict of Nursia 393 Saint Bonaventure 400 Boniface VIII 401 Cacciaguida 405–406 Can Grande della Scala 411 Vieri de’ Cerchi 420 Charles of Anjou 421

Marcus Tullius Cicero 423 La commedia 21 Empress Constance 427 Constantine the Great 427 Il convivio 250 Cunizza da Romano 428–429 Dante Alighieri 3 King David 431 De monarchia 298, 299, 301 De vulgari eloquentia 365 Dionysius the Areopagite 433 Saint Dominic 435 Eclogues 282 Epistles 286, 293–296 Fiesole 440 Florence 442 Folquet de Marseille 444 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Ghibelline 452 Giano della Bella 455 Giovanna 457 Godfrey of Bouillon 458 Gregory the Great 460 Robert Guiscard 465 James the Apostle 472 Joachim of Fiore 473 John the Apostle 474 John the Baptist 475 John XXII 473–474 Justinian I 476 lower Paradise 176–191 Lucrece 480 Saint Lucy 481 Judas Maccabeus 482 Neri 491 Paulus Orosius 496 Saint Peter 499 Saint Peter Damian 499–500 Donati Piccarda 438 Plato 504 Purgatorio 104 Ravenna 507 Ripheus 508 Robert of Anjou 509 Romeo di Villeneuve 509 Siger of Brabant 514–515 Taddeo d’Alderotto of Bologna 519 Trajan 522 Verona 528 Parnassus 158, 175 Parole mie che per lo mondo siete (“Words of mine that have gone about the world”) 327–328 “Parson’s Tale” (Chaucer) 125 Pasiphaë 52, 140, 154–155

Index 563 Pedro III of Aragon 102, 111 Peire d’Alvernhe 458, 498 Pelacani, Antonio 310–311 penance 21, 96, 121, 125, 126 Perchè ti vedi giovinetta e bella (“Because you see you’re so young and fair”) 328–329 Perch’io non trovo chi meco ragioni (“Since I find no one here with whom to speak”) 345 Perini, Dino 16, 281 Per pruova di saper come vale o quanto (“The goldsmith, to test the value of gold, brings it to the fire”) 314 Per quella via che la bellezza corre (“Along the way which beauty runs”) 326–327 Per una ghirlandetta (“Because of a garland I saw”) 320 Peter, Saint 230, 498–499 Adam 374 Boniface VIII 401 Joseph Caiaphas 409 Celestine V 419 De monarchia 306 Ghibelline 453 Inferno 59 James the Apostle 471 John the Apostle 474 John XXII 473 Paradiso 222–223, 234, 241 Purgatorio 115, 144 Sylvester I 518 Trajan 523 Peter Comestor 96, 206, 234, 374 Peter Damian, Saint 200, 219–220, 499–500, 507 Peter Lombard 192, 193, 202, 378 Peter of Auvergne. See Peire d’Alvernhe Petrarch, Francesco 500–501 Benvenuto da Imola 393 Giovanni Boccaccio 396–397 Leonardo Bruni 403 Cino da Pistoia 425 Clement V 426 De vulgari eloquentia 411 Florence 444 Fortune 445 Gianni degla Alfani 455 sonnet 516 Tuscany 523 Petrus Comestor 193–194 Petrus de Alvèrnia. See Peire d’Alvernhe Phaëton 58, 291

Pharsalia (Lucan) 60, 204, 277 Philip II (king of Macedon) 379 Philip III the Bold (king of France) 102, 111, 216 Philip IV the Fair (king of France) 501–502 Boniface VIII 400, 401 Charles of Valois 422 Clement V 425 Dante Alighieri 12 Florence 443 Henry VII of Luxembourg 466 Hugh Capet 469 Inferno 60 Paradiso 216 Purgatorio 102, 111, 135, 143, 170 Se vedi li occhi miei di pianger vaghi 342 Philomela 114, 131 Phlegyas 40–41, 44, 106 Physics (Aristotle) 43, 273, 299 Pia de’ Tolomei 11, 100, 109, 471, 502–503 Piangete, amanti, poi che piange amore (“If love himself weep, shall not lovers weep”) 351 Pier delle Vigne 503 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Giacomo da Lentino 454 Inferno 48, 52 Paradiso 187, 207 Purgatorio 105 Piers Plowman (Langland) 219 Pierus (king of Macedonia) 104 Pisa 503 Arno 388 Giovanni Cimabue 424 Dante Alighieri 4 Farinata degli Uberti 439 Florence 443 Vanni Fucci 450 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Inferno 75, 89 Purgatorio 103, 118, 127 Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila 510 Tuscany 523 Ugolino della Gherardesca 524 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 Nino Visconti 529 Michel Zanche 531 Pisistratus (tyrant of Athens) 119, 129 Pius I (pope) 234 Plato 503–504 Aristotle 386 Boethius 397

Leonardo Bruni 403 Il convivio 265, 266 Inferno 31 Paradiso 177 Purgatorio 105, 107 podestà 63, 100, 127, 128, 131 Poetria nova (Geoffrey of Vinsauf) 368 Policraticus (John of Salisbury) 375 Politics (Aristotle) 299 Polydorus (Trojan prince) 52, 136, 144, 146 Polymnestor (king of Thrace) 136, 144, 146 Polynices 124, 184 Polyphemus 282, 283 Pompey 134, 186 Porsenna (king of Clusium) 184 Portinari, Beatrice (Bici). See Beatrice Portinari, Folco 5, 7, 356, 361, 504 Porto San Piero 196, 210 Poscia ch’amor el tutto m’ha lasciato (“Since love has completely abandoned me”) 331–333 Powers 173, 237, 258 predestination 200, 219, 227 Priam (king of Troy) 144 pride Inferno 31, 81, 87 Paradiso 208 Purgatorio 104, 116, 117, 122–124 Primum Mobile La commedia 22 Il convivio 257, 260 De monarchia 299 Paradiso 173, 181, 206, 222, 225, 236, 240 The Prince (Machiavelli) 82 Principalities 173, 237 “Prioress’s Tale” (Chaucer) 247 Priscian 50, 373 Procne 114, 120, 131 prophecy La commedia 25 Inferno 31, 33, 37, 42, 64, 74, 78–79 Purgatorio 110, 114, 147, 151 Provençal language 140, 252 Provenzan Salvani 117, 122, 126, 505, 512 prudence 35, 105, 113, 165 Psalm 32 158, 163 Psalm 51 108, 168 Psalm 114 105, 293, 296 Psalm 119 135, 142

Ptolemaic cosmos 94, 173, 181, 191 Ptolemy 31, 186 Publius Ovidius Naso. See Ovid Puccio Galigai 65–66, 505 Purgatorio 95–172, 99, 101, 103, 109, 115, 117, 124, 130, 138, 153, 159, 165 Achilles 374 Adam 374 The Aeneid 376 Ante-Purgatory 97–116 Arezzo 384 Aristotle 386 Arnaut Daniel 387 Arno 388 Belacqua 391–392 Bianchi 396 Orbicciani da Lucca Bonagiunta 399 Boniface VIII 401 Buonconte da Montefeltro 404 Cacciaguida 405 Gherardo da Cammino 409 Battle of Campaldino 410 Can Grande della Scala 411 il Cardinale 413 Casella 414 Cato of Utica 416 Charles Martel 420 Charles of Anjou 421 Charles of Valois 422 Chi udisse tossir la malfatata 333 Giovanni Cimabue 424 La commedia 21 Il convivio 269 Cunizza da Romano 428 King David 431 De vulgari eloquentia 369 Doglia mi reca ne lo core ardire 344 Dolce stil novo 434 Corso Donati 435–436 Forese Donati 437 Epistles 287 Florence 443 Fourth Eclogue 446 Frederick II of Swabia 449 Ghibelline 453 Giacomo da Lentino 454 Giotto di Bondone 456 Giraut de Bornelh 458 Fra Gomita of Gallura 459 Gregory the Great 460 Guido da Montefeltro 462 Guido del Duca 462 Guido Guinizelli 464 Henry III of England 466

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Purgatorio (continued) Homer 468 Hugh Capet 469 Jacopo del Cassero of Fano 471 John the Apostle 474 Justinian I 476 lower Purgatory 116–132 Saint Lucy 481 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 483 Corrado II Malaspina 483 Moroello III Malaspina 484 Manfred 485 Marco Lombardo 485 middle Purgatory 132–134 Oderisi of Gubbio 495 Saint Peter 499 Philip IV the Fair 502 Pia de’ Tolomei 502 Donati Piccarda 437–438 Provenzan Salvani 505 Ravenna 507 Rinieri de’ Paolucci da Calboli 508 Rudolph of Hapsburg 510 Sapia of Siena 512 Sordello 516–517 Publius Papinus Statius 517 Sylvester I 518 terza rima 520 Theseus 521 Thomas Aquinas 522 Trajan 522 Tuscany 524 upper Purgatory 134–157 Verona 528 Nino Visconti 529 La Vita nuova 353, 354 Voi che savete ragionar d’Amore 327 William VII 530 Pylades 118, 126 Pythagoras 265, 369, 505– 506

Q Quaestio de aqua et terra (A Question about Water and Earth) 309–311 Quantunque volte, lasso, mi rimembra (“Each time the painful thought comes to my mind”) 357–358 Quest of the Holy Grail 169 Quintus Horatius Flaccus. See Horace

R Rabanus 194, 205 Rachel 140, 156–157 Rahab 181, 191 Ravenna 507 Arno 388 Dante Alighieri 15–17 Gemma Donati 437 Eclogues 281, 283 Francesca da Rimini 447 Gregory the Great 459 Guido del Duca 462 Guido Novello da Polenta 463 Inferno 35–36, 67 Justinian I 476 Nicholas III 492 Saint Peter Damian 499 Purgatorio 128 Rinieri de’ Paolucci da Calboli 508 Raymond Beringer IV ([Ramon Berenguer] count of Provence) 143, 179, 187 reason La commedia 22, 25 Inferno 33, 44 Paradiso 182 Purgatorio 98, 107, 130, 145 rebirth 144, 172, 242 Regina coeli 222, 228 Regula monachorum (Saint Benedict) 220 Rehoboam 117, 124 Revelation, book of 73, 142, 164, 165, 228 Richard of Saint Victor 192, 193, 202, 205 Rime 311–349, 441 Rinaldo degli Scrovegni 51, 58, 507–508 Rinieri de’ Paolucci da Calboli 119, 128, 388, 508 Ripheus 199, 218, 431, 508–509 Robert of Anjou (king of Naples) 509 Giovanni Boccaccio 396 Charles Martel 420 Dante Alighieri 14 Giotto di Bondone 457 Henry VII of Luxembourg 467 John XXII 473 Paradiso 180, 189 Roland 88, 213 Romagna 67, 119, 127, 365 Roman Catholic Church 54, 153 Roman de la Rose 243 Roman Empire

Il convivio 271–273 De monarchia 300, 302–306 Epistles 286, 288 Inferno 33, 94 Purgatorio 146 Romans, book of 154, 246 Rome 25, 54, 189, 291 Romeo di Villeneuve 179, 187, 509–510 Romualdo, Saint 220–221 Romulus 178, 189 Rudolph of Hapsburg 510 Henry III of England 466 Nicholas III 492 Purgatorio 102, 111, 112 Sordello 516 Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila 91, 510–511 il Cardinale 413 Dante Alighieri 7 Giovanna 457 Inferno 89 Purgatorio 138 Ugolino della Gherardesca 524–525 Nino Visconti 529 Rupert I (Holy Roman Emperor) 190 Ruskin, John viii Rusticucci, Jacopo 39, 50, 56, 463, 511, 520

S sacrament 21, 96, 114–115 salvation La commedia 22 Inferno 32, 56, 95 Paradiso 164, 219 Purgatorio 97, 164, 168 Salve, Regina (“Hail, Queen”) (hymn) 102, 111, 112 Samuel, book of 116, 306 San Zeno 64, 133 Sapia of Siena 118, 126, 512 Sapientia 166, 168 Satan 89–90, 93–94 Saul 117, 124 Savere e cortesia, ingegno ed arte (“Knowledge and courtesy; natural with and acquired skill”) 315 Savete guidicar vostra ragione (“You know how to interpret your theme, intelligent as you are”) 313–314 Sayers, Dorothy 66, 234 Scale of Perfection (Hilton) 219 schismatics 67–68, 83, 83 Scholasticism Il convivio 254, 270 De monarchia 300, 301, 307

Inferno 84 Io sono stato con Amore insieme 346 Paradiso 192, 202, 236–237 Per quella via che la bellezza corre 326 Purgatorio 107, 130, 133, 139 Quaestio de aqua et terra 309–310 La Vita nuova 353 Sciancato. See Puccio Galigai Sciarra Colonna 143–144 Scott, John A. 262, 268, 278 Scott, Michael 61, 74, 512–513 Second Coming of Christ 166, 171 Second Crusade 196, 208, 209, 244 “Second Nun’s Tale” (Chaucer) 247 Seleucus IV (king of Syria) 144 Se Lippo amico se’tu che me leggi (“If you who read me are friend Lippo”) 316 Seneca 393, 479, 513–514 Sennacherib (king of Assyria) 117, 124–125 Sentences (Peter Lombard) 202, 231, 378 Sententiarum libri quator (Peter Lombard) 192 Seraphim 173, 236, 258 Sermon on the Mount 125, 126 “Sermons on the Advents” (Saint Bernard) 45 Se’tu colui c’hai trattato sovente (“Are you the one that often spoke to us”) 355 Se vedi li occhi miei di pianger vaghi (“Lord, if you see my eyes desiring to weep”) 341–342 Seven Against Thebes 48, 60, 124, 184 Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Orosius) 192 Seventh Satire (Juvenal) 147 Severus, Alexander 234–235 Sicilian Vespers 180, 189 Sicily 216, 366 Siena, Italy 69, 85, 100, 117, 118, 379 Siger of Brabant 192, 202–203, 441, 514–515, 522 Sì lungiamente m’ha tenuto Amore (“So long a time has love kept me a slave”) 355

Index 565 Simoniac Pope 72 Simonists 59 simony 59–60, 72–73 sin La commedia 21–22 Inferno 31–32, 80, 93 Purgatorio 104–106, 125 Singleton, Charles Inferno 76, 91, 92 Paradiso 219 Purgatorio 157, 162, 171 Sinon 25, 69, 86, 375, 515, 527 Sixtus I (pope) 234 Sixtus II (pope) 184 sloth 40, 121, 132–134 sodomites 6, 48–50, 53, 139– 140, 154–155 Solomon 192, 194–195, 206–207, 379 Sonar bracchetti e cacciatori aizzare (“The belling of hounds, the cries of hunters urging them on”) 318 Sonetto, se Meuccio t’è mostrato (“Sonnet, when Meuccio has been pointed out to you”) 319 Song of Roland 213 Song of Solomon 158–159 sonnet 515–516 Cecco Angiolieri 382 Orbicciani da Lucca Bonagiunta 399 Guido Cavalcanti 417 Cino da Pistoia 424 Il convivio 256 Dante Alighieri 6 De vulgari eloquentia 411 Corso Donati 436 Forese Donati 437 Il Fiore 440 Gianni degla Alfani 454 Guido Guinizelli 463 Guittone d’Arezzo 465 Lapo Gianni 477 Francesco Petrarch 501 Folco Portinari 504 Purgatorio 149 Rime 312 Sophistical Refutations (Aristotle) 308 Sordello 516–517 Il convivio 279 Cunizza da Romano 428 Paradiso 180, 190 Philip IV the Fair 502 Purgatorio 100, 102–104, 110 Romeo di Villeneuve 509 Rudolph of Hapsburg 510 William VII 530

soul La commedia 22 Il convivio 264 Epistles 285 Inferno 45–46 Purgatorio 100, 107, 132, 152, 153 Spesse fiate vegnonmi a la mente (“Time and again the thought comes to my mind”) 353 spheres of Heaven 21, 173, 181, 225–227, 257, 265 Spiritualist Franciscans 193, 194, 205, 206 Statius, Publius Papinus 517 Achilles 374 Capaneus 412 La commedia 26 Il convivio 279 Fourth Eclogue 446 Homer 468 Inferno 60 Jason 472 Lucan 480 Purgatorio 96, 136, 145–147 Theseus 521 Stephen, Saint 119, 129 Stephen Urosh II (king of Rascia) 216 Stoicism 71, 105, 272, 280 “Stone Lady” 336–339 Stygian Lake 42 Styx River 41, 49, 106, 110 Summa contra Gentiles (Saint Thomas Aquinas) 261, 270 Summa de creaturis 379 Summa de vitiis (Peraldus) 123 Summae Deus clementiae (“God of supreme clemency”) (hymn) 139, 154 Summa theologiae (Albertus Magnus) 379 Summa theologica (Aquinas) 8, 132, 202, 237, 238 Sun 191, 193, 201, 203 Sylvester I (pope) 73, 169, 304, 428, 517–518

T Taddeo d’Alderotto of Bologna 519 Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare (“Such sweet decorum and such gentle grace”) 355 Tebaldello dei Zambrasi 519 Te Deum laudamus (“We praise you, O God”) 104, 115–116, 223, 229 Tegghiaio Aldobrandi 39, 50, 463, 511, 519–520

Te lucis ante (“Before [the ending of] the day”) (hymn) 102, 112, 114 temperance 35, 105, 113, 148, 165 Tereus 114, 131 terza rima 13, 21, 396, 520 Tesoretto (Brunetto Latini) 6 Thaïs 59, 520–521 Thebaid (Statius) 26, 60, 136, 147 Theodoric the Ostrogoth 202, 382 Theseus 47, 52, 139, 152, 521 Thibault II (count of Champagne and king of Navarre) 62 Thomas Aquinas, Saint 521–522 Albertus Magnus 378, 379 Anselm of Canterbury 383 Aristotle 386 Augustine of Hippo 389 Averroës 389 Boethius 398 Saint Bonaventure 399 Charles of Anjou 421 Il convivio 254, 261 Dante Alighieri 8 De monarchia 301 Dionysius the Areopagite 433 Saint Dominic 435 Epistles 296 Fortune 445 Francis of Assisi 448 Inferno 40, 52, 84 Paradiso 183–185, 192– 193, 202–204, 218, 231, 237, 238 Purgatorio 107, 125, 133, 141, 143, 147, 171 Ripheus 508–509 Siger of Brabant 514 Thrones 173, 236, 258 Tiberius (emperor of Rome) 179, 186 Timaeus (Plato) 177, 183 Tithonius (Trojan prince) 114 Titus (emperor of Rome) 146, 179, 187 Titus Livius. See Livy Tityrus 281–282 Tomb of Dante 16 Tomyris (queen of Scythia) 117, 125 Totila (Ostrogoth leader) 369 Tower of Babel 70, 117, 124, 287, 363–365 Trajan 522–523 Constantine the Great 427 King David 431

Gregory the Great 460 John the Apostle 474 Paradiso 199, 217–219 Purgatorio 105, 116, 121 Trattatello in laude di Dante (In Praise of Dante) (Boccaccio) 17 Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute (“Three women have come round my heart”) 340–341 Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil 160, 169 Trésor (Brunetto Latini) 50, 55, 237 Tribaldello. See Tebaldello dei Zambrasi Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer) 221 Trojan War 25, 66, 69, 117, 125, 526 Tuscan dialect 156, 364–365 Tuscany 523–524 Alessandro and Napoleone degli Alberti 378 Arbia 384 Arezzo 384 Arno 387 Bianchi 395 Battle of Campaldino 409 Dante Alighieri 3 Farinata degli Uberti 439 Florence 441 Vanni Fucci 450 Ghibelline 452 Guido del Duca 462 Henry VII of Luxembourg 467 Inferno 64 Loderingo degli Andalò 478 Mainardo Pagano da Susinana 482–483 Saint Peter Damian 500 Pia de’ Tolomei 502 Pier delle Vigne 503 Pisa 503 Provenzan Salvani 505 Purgatorio 119, 127 Tutti li miei penser parlan d’Amore (“All my thoughts speak to me concerning love”) 353

U Ubertino of Casal 193, 205 Ugolino. See Visconti, Nino Ugolino della Gherardesca 525–526 Dante Alighieri 7 Giovanna 457

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Ugolino della Gherardesca (continued) Inferno 27–28, 89, 92–93 Marco Lombardo 486 Pisa 503 Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila 510–511 Nino Visconti 529 Uguccione della Faggiuola 15, 436, 526 Ulysses 526 Achilles 374 Diomedes 433 Guido da Montefeltro 461 Inferno 27, 66, 80–81 Paradiso 225 Sinon 515 Understanding Dante (Scott) 268, 278 Un dì si venne a me malinconia (“One day melancholy came to me and said”) 325 universe 225–226, 242 Urania 158, 163 Urban I (pope) 235 Urban IV (pope) 143 usury 43, 48, 51, 53, 58

V Valerian (emperor of Rome) 184 Varieties of Religious Experience (James) 247 Vede perfettamente onne salute (“He sees an affluence of joy ideal”) 355 vegetative soul 107, 153, 264 Venite a intender li sospiri miei (“Now come to me and listen to my sighs”) 357 Venus 97, 180, 188, 255 vernacular Il convivio 251–253, 255 De vulgari eloquentia 362–363, 365, 368 Epistles 296

Verona 528 Can Grande della Scala 410 Cunizza da Romano 428 Dante Alighieri 12, 14–15 De vulgari eloquentia 365 Paradiso 190 Quaestio de aqua et terra 309 Ravenna 507 Uguccione della Faggiuola 526 Vespasian (emperor of Rome) 146 Vexilla regis prodeunt 89, 528–529 Videro li occhi miei quanta pietate (“With my own eyes I saw how much compassion”) 358 violence, sins of 47–58 Virgil 32, 77, 385. See also The Aeneid; Fourth Eclogue The Aeneid 376–377 and Filippo Argenti degli Adimari 385 Belacqua 391–392 Geri del Bello 392 Cacus 407 Casella 414 La commedia 22, 25–26 De monarchia 302, 304 Dido 432 Diomedes 432 Eclogues 282, 283 Epistles 283 Fortune 445 Homer 468 Horace 468 Inferno 29, 31–37, 40–53, 56–71, 73–75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 84–86, 88–92, 94 Manto 485 Nimrod 493 Ovid 497

Paradiso 174, 176, 181, 189, 215, 218, 246 Purgatorio 95, 97–100, 102–111, 113, 116–122, 126, 128, 129, 132–142, 145–147, 149, 152, 156–160, 162, 163, 166, 167, 172 Vexilla regis prodeunt 528 Virgin Mary Inferno 34 Paradiso 222, 244 Purgatorio 98, 102, 109, 111, 112, 116, 119, 121, 129, 133–135, 139 virtue Il convivio 270, 279 Doglia mi reca ne lo core ardire 342–343 Inferno 35 Paradiso 173, 237 Purgatorio 95 Visconti, Nino 91, 528–529 Dante Alighieri 7 Giovanna 457 Fra Gomita of Gallura 459 Purgatorio 103, 113 Ruggieri degli Ubaldini della Pila 510–511 Ugolino della Gherardesca 524 Michel Zanche 531 La Vita nuova (New Life) 349–362 Cecco Angiolieri 382 Giovanni Boccaccio 396 Boethius 399 Orbicciani da Lucca Bonagiunta 399 Guido Cavalcanti 418 La commedia 22, 26 Il convivio 249–250, 252, 257, 261 Dante Alighieri 6–8 De vulgari eloquentia 363, 411

Horace 469 Paradiso 232 Folco Portinari 504 Purgatorio 138, 150, 167 sonnet 516 Voi, donne, che pietoso atto mostrate (“Ladies who show pity in your bearing”) 324 Voi che’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete (“You who through intelligence move the third sphere”) 250, 257–262, 327, 357 Voi che portate la sembianza umile (“O you who bear a look of resignation”) 355 Voi che savete ragionar d’Amore (“O you who know how to reason about love”) 327 Volgate li occhi a veder chi mi tira (“Turn your eyes to see who it is who draws me”) 318–319

W White Guelphs. See Bianchi Whore of Babylon 73, 170 “Wife of Bath’s Tale” (Chaucer) 268 will 87, 121, 150, 157, 178, 184 William II (king of Sicily) 199, 217–218 William VII (Longsword) 102, 111, 530 Wood of Suicides 47–48, 127 Word of God 166, 206

Z Zanche, Michel 62, 89, 401, 459, 530